GIFT   OF 
P  res.    B.I.   Wheeler 


COMRADE  YETTA 


flu*. 


COPYRIGHT,  1913, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  February,  1913.     Reprinted 
March,  August,  October,  1913. 


Nortoooft  Crests 

J.  8.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


THE   ORGANIZED  WORKERS 

WHO  COOPERATED  IN  THE 

PRODUCTION    OF 

THIS  BOOK 


CONTENTS 
BOOK  I 

CHAPTER 

I.    BENJAMIN'S  BOOK-STORK      ......  1 

II.    YETTA'S  GIRLHOOD 12 

III.  THE  SWEAT-SHOP          .        .        .        .        .      '•   •.'•';• .  23 

IV.  LIFE  CALLS    ..'.        .        »-^4        «'       »    l$>      >  34 
V.    HARRY  KLEIN       ...        .        .        .        •    V.        .  48 

VI.    THE  PIT'S  EDGE   .        ...        ...        .        .60 

BOOK   II 

VII.    THE  SKIRT-FINISHERS'  BALL 75 

VIII.    NEW  FRIENDS 89 

IX.    YETTA  ENLISTS 106 

X.     THE  W.  T.  U.  L 122 

XI.    MABEL'S  FLAT 131 

XII.    YETTA'S  GOOD -BY 142 

BOOK  III 

XIII.  THE  STRIKE  .        .        . 153 

XIV.  ARREST  .                 166 

XV.    THE  WORKHOUSE 185 

XVI.    CARNEGIE  HALL 199 

XVII.    THE  OPERATING  ROOM 216 

XVIII.    WALTER'S  FAREWELL 226 

BOOK  IV 

XIX.    YETTA'S  WORK 243 

XX.    ISADORE  BRAUN 263 

v 


VI 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTEB 

XXL    THE  STAR   .       .       ..       ...       o       .        . 

XXII.     WALTER'S  RETURN    .        .        .        .        .  295 

XXIIL    THE  PALACE  OF  DREAMS          .        .        .        .  312 

XXIV.    THE  CRASH 330 

BOOK   V 

XXV.    ISADORE'S  MEDICINE 344 

XXVI.     THE  CLARION v  355 

XXVII.     NEW  WORK .    870 

XXVIII.     YETTA  TAKES  HOLD 353 

XXIX.    WALTER'S  HAVEN 401 

XXX.    EVALUATION 409 

XXXI.    YETTA  FINDS  HERSELF 423 

XXXII.    OLD  FRIENDS  MEET  —  AND  PART    .        .  435 


COMRADE  YETTA 


COMRADE  YETTA 


BOOK  I 

CHAPTER  I 
BENJAMIN'S  BOOK-STORE 

THE  girlhood  of  Yetta  Rayefsky  was  passed  in  her 
father's  second-hand  book-store  on  East  Broadway. 
In  the  late  nineties  the  fame  of  his  kindly  philosophy 
had  attracted  a  circle  of  followers,  and  the  store  be 
came  almost  prosperous. 

It  was  in  a  basement  —  four  steps  down  from  the 
sidewalk.  The  close-packed  cases  around  the  walls 
were  filled  with  the  wildest  assortment  of  second-hand 
English  books.  You  were  likely  to  find  a  novel  of 
Laura  Jean  Libby  cheek  by  jowl  with  "  The  Book 
of  Mormon/7  between  two  volumes  of  "  Browning's 
Poems."  The  tables  in  the  centre  were  piled  cha 
otically  with  books  and  periodicals  in  Russian  and 
Hebrew. 

Every  night  in  the  week  you  would  have  found 
Benjamin  Rayefsky  and  his  little  daughter  Yetta 
perched  on  high  stools  back  of  the  desk  to  the  left  of 
the  door.  He  would  have  greeted  you  with  his  sad, 
wistful  smile,  and  would  have  gotten  down  to  shake 
hands  with  you.  It  would  have  surprised  and  hurt 
him  if  you  had  asked  at  once  for  a  book,  paid  for  it, 
and  gone  out.  It  was  customary  to  take  plenty  of 

B  1 


COMRADE  YETTA 

time  and  to  make  quite  sure  that  he  did  not  have  in 
stock  some  book  you  would  prefer  to  the  one  you  had 
come  after. 

When  he  had  succeeded  in  making  you  feel  at  home, 
he  would  have  returned  to  his  desk,  and  Yetta  would 
have  gone  on  reading  aloud  to  him.  Very  likely  you 
would  have  wanted  to  laugh  at  the  discussions  they 
had  over  how  various  English  words  should  be  pro 
nounced.  When  they  could  not  agree,  Benjamin 
would  write  down  the  word  on  a  slip  of  paper  for  Yetta 
to  take  to  school  in  the  morning  and  submit  to  the 
teacher.  You  would  have  wondered  with  amusement 
how  much  the  little  lassie  understood  of  the  ponderous 
tomes  she  read  in  her  high-pitched  uncertain  voice. 

But  you  would  not  have  wanted  to  laugh  at  the 
memory  you  carried  away  of  the  couple.  More  than 
one  Gentile  who  had  dropped  into  the  store  by  chance 
went  away  racking  their  brains  to  recall  the  Holy 
Picture  the  Rayefskys  suggested.  It  was  what  the 
psychologists  call  " inverse  association."  The  Father 
and  Daughter  inevitably  called  to  mind  the  Mother 
and  Son. 

Benjamin  resembled  —  except  for  an  ugly  scar  on 
his  forehead —  Guido  Reni's  "  Christ."  There  was  the 
same  poignant  sadness  about  his  mouth,  the  same  soft 
beard  and  sensitive  nose;  there  was  the  same  other 
worldly  kindliness  in  his  eyes  and  his  every  gesture. 
And  little  Yetta  was  very  like  the  Child  Mary  in 
Titian's  "  Presentation." 

Towards  nine  o'clock  the  little  shop  began  to  fill 
up.  First  of  the  regulars  was  a  consumptive  lad 
whose  attention  had  been  caught  by  an  advertisement 
asserting  that  a  certain  encyclopaedia  was  worth  a 


BENJAMIN'S  BOOK-STORE  3 

university  education.  Lacking  money  to  go  to  college 
or  to  acquire  so  large  a  set  of  books,  he  was  reading 
one  of  these  compendiums  in  Ray ef sky's  Book-store. 
He  had  reached  the  letter  "  R, "  and  considered  him 
self  a  junior.  There  were  others  who  came  for  regu 
lar  reading,  but  more  came  to  talk  —  and  to  listen  to 
Benjamin.  At  ten  he  would  close  Yetta's  book  and, 
putting  his  arm  about  her  shoulders,  begin  his  evening 
discourse.  Generally  his  text  was  some  phrase  from 
his  reading  which  had  impressed  him  during  the  day. 
Before  long  the  little  girl's  eyes  would  close  and  her 
head  fall  over  on  her  father's  shoulder. 

But  one  night  he  kept  her  awake.  There  was  a 
wedding  in  progress  across  the  street.  It  was  his 
custom  to  talk  directly  to  some  one  person  of  his  au 
dience,  and  this  night  he  addressed  himself  to  Yetta. 
With  poetic  imagination  he  paraphrased  the  idyll  of 
Ruth,  Naomi,  and  Boaz,  making  of  the  story  an  inter 
pretation  of  marriage  for  his  daughter's  guidance. 
Some  time  in  the  years  to  come  a  Man  would  claim 
her,  and  against  that  time  he  taught  her  the  vow  that 
Ruth  made  to  Naomi. 

"  Whither  thou  goest,  I  will  go ;  where  thou  lodgest, 
I  will  lodge :  thy  people  shall  be  my  people,  and  thy 
God  my  God:  where  thou  diest  will  I  die,  and  there 
will  I  be  buried :  the  Lord  do  so  to  me,  and  more  also, 
if  aught  but  death  part  thee  and  me." 

He  made  her  repeat  the  vow  over  and  over  again  in 
Hebrew  until  she  knew  it  by  heart. 

"It  is  with  these  words,  my  daughter,"  he  said, 
"that  you  must  greet  the  Bridegroom." 

Much  of  the  gentle  wisdom  which  her  father  preached 
to  the  little  shopful  of  listeners  Yetta  did  not  fully 


4  COMRADE  YETTA 

understand.  But  for  nine  years,  from  the  time  she 
was  six  till  she  reached  fifteen,  it  was  the  lullaby  to 
which,  every  night,  she  fell  asleep,  perched  on  her  high 
stool,  her  head  on  his  shoulder.  Much  of  it  sank  in. 

This  is  to  be  the  story  of  how  little  Yetta  Rayefsky 
grew  up  into  useful  happiness.  But  her  father's  in 
fluence  was  the  thing,  more  than  all  else,  that  differ 
entiated  her  from  thousands  of  other  East  Side  girls. 
Without  Benjamin's  story,  hers  would  be  incompre 
hensible. 

His  father  had  been  a  man  of  means  in  the  Russian 
town  of  Kovna.  But  Benjamin,  the  only  son,  had  no 
talent  for  trade ;  he  was  of  the  type  of  Jews  who  dream. 
And  he  loved  books.  The  library  facilities  of  the 
Kovna  Ghetto  were  limited,  but  he  read  everything 
on  which  he  could  lay  hands.  From  his  youth  up  he 
knew  and  loved  the  Psalms  and  the  more  poetic  sec 
tions  of  the  Prophets.  The  age-old  beauty  of  the 
Hebrew  literature  was  a  never  failing  spring  at  which 
he  refreshed  his  soul.  He  had  also  read  the  novels  of 
Gogol,  Korolenko,  and  Dostoiefsky,  and  the  few  books 
he  could  find  on  history  and  science. 

A  strange  sort  of  cosmography  had  grown  out  of  this 
ill-assorted  reading.  He  took  the  Prophecies  seriously 
and  looked  forward  with  abiding  faith  to  the  coming  of 
the  Kingdom  of  God  on  earth.  Like  most  deeply 
religious  people  he  was  not  strictly  orthodox.  He  scru 
pulously  observed  the  forms  of  Hebraic  ritualism,  but 
his  real  inspiration  came  from  King  David  rather  than 
from  scribes  who  compiled  the  Talmud  or  the  Rabbis 
who  minutely  interpreted  the  Torah.  He  had  much 
sympathy  with  the  Zionists,  for  they  also  had  ardent 
faith  in  the  Promises,  but  he  took  no  interest  in  the 


BENJAMIN'S  BOOK-STORE  5 

geographical  aspects  of  their  aspirations.  The  Mes 
siah,  when  he  came,  would  establish  His  reign  over  all 
the  earth.  He  also  believed,  as  did  the  Zionists,  that 
the  Jews  were  the  light-bearers  of  the  human  family, 
but  he  considered  them  a  People  chosen  for  special 
service  —  not  for  peculiar  favors. 

Added  to  this  hoary  mysticism  was  a  very  disjointed 
idea  of  world's  history  and  a  crude  conception  of 
Evolution.  He  believed  that  God's  purpose  with  the 
Race  was  being  worked  out  through  the  development 
of  Democracy  —  which  he  understood  to  be  another 
word  for  loving-kindness  and  brotherhood.  He  had 
never  seen  Democracy.  He  knew  nothing  of  the 
crimes  committed  in  its  name ;  he  had  no  conception 
of  the  modern  Plutocracy,  which  is  everywhere  in  a 
life-and-death  struggle  with  Democracy  —  and  as  often 
as  not  seems  to  be  winning  the  fight. 

This  vague  idealization  of  Democracy  was  stimulated 
by  the  rare  letters  from  his  sister  Martha  in  New  York. 
While  Benjamin  was  still  a  lad  she  had  married  David 
Goldstein,  a  ne'er-do-weel  of  the  community,  and  with 
her  dowry  they  had  emigrated.  The  poor  woman  could 
hardly  be  blamed  if  she  hid  from  her  family  the  cruel 
realities  of  her  life.  She  wrote  what  she  thought 
would  please  them.  As  her  imagination  was  limited, 
she  borrowed  her  metaphors  from  the  Scriptures  and 
had  milk  and  honey  flowing  down  the  Bowery.  Ben 
jamin  often  illuminated  his  talks  on  the  Promised 
Land  by  references  to  the  freedom  and  justice  of 
America.  It  was  not  hard  for  him  to  believe  in  a 
Utopia.  It  did  not  seem  too  much  to  ask  that  all  men 
should  be  as  unselfish  and  gentle  as  himself. 

Living  thus  in  his  dreams  he  grew  to  manhood.     In 


6  COMRADE  YETTA 

the  early  twenties  he  married.  His  wife,  fortunately, 
had  common  sense  enough  for  two,  and  protected  his 
patrimony  from  waste.  The  first  child  they  named 
Benjamin,  and  a  few  years  later  Yetta  was  born. 

The  father  held  a  privileged  position  in  the  Jewish 
community.  His  pure,  unworldly  life,  his  ever  ready 
sympathy,  his  learning  and  homely  wisdom,  had  earned 
him  the  rank  of  a  saint.  There  were  some,  of  course, 
who  shook  their  heads  over  his  dreamings.  With  so 
much  money  to  start  with,  they  said,  he  might  have 
become  rich  —  perhaps  a  " merchant  of  the  first  class/' 
But  every  one  loved  him.  The  women  came  to  him 
with  their  troubles,  and  even  the  busiest,  most  care 
worn  men  liked  to  sit  for  a  while  and  hear  him  recite  the 
sonorous  prophecies  and  talk  of  the  Kingdom  which  is 
to  come. 

It  was  in  1890  that  Benjamin  and  his  daughter  were 
torn  loose  from  their  anchorage.  The  affair  lacked  the 
proportions  of  the  later  and  more  formal  Jew-killings 
of  Kishineff  and  Odessa.  The  cause  of  the  outbreak 
was  never  explained,  but  we,  who  lynch  negroes  on 
so  slight  provocation,  may  not  throw  stones.  Unex 
pectedly  a  mob  —  the  scum  of  the  Christian  quarter  — 
rushed  into  the  Ghetto.  At  first  they  were  intent  on 
loot,  but  the  hooligans  had  had  to  drink  much  vodka 
to  generate  sufficient  courage  to  attack  the  defenceless 
Jews.  Passions  so  stimulated  cannot  be  controlled, 
and  soon  the  mob  was  engaged  in  murder  and  rape. 
Benjamin  went  out  on  the  street  to  reason  with  them. 
They  left  him  for  dead. 

It  was  several  weeks  before  he  regained  his  conscious 
ness.  An  ugly  scar  stretched  from  above  his  left  eye 
to  his  ear.  Many  of  his  friends  held  that  he  never 


BENJAMIN'S  BOOK-STORE  7 

quite  recovered  from  that  wound,  for  as  long  as  he 
lived  he  sometimes  spoke  of  his  wife  and  his  son  Ben 
jamin  as  though  they  were  still  alive.  But  such  lapses 
of  memory  happened  rarely ;  generally  he  remembered 
that  they  had  been  buried  while  he  was  in  the  hospital. 
He  had  only  Yetta  left.  He  would  surely  have  gone 
mad  if  he  had  lived  on  among  the  memories  of  Kovna. 
So  he  had  emigrated  to  join  his  sister  in  the  Happy 
Valley  of  America. 

There  was  wonderful  vitality  to  Benjamin's  dreams. 
Even  the  tangible  realities  of  Orchard  Street  could  not 
obliterate  them. 

Many  hideous  things  which  he  saw  he  did  not  under 
stand.  Among  such  phenomena  was  his  brother-in- 
law.  In  the  social  organization  of  the  Kovna  Ghetto, 
David  Goldstein  had  found  no  place.  The  opportuni 
ties  for  viciousness  were  too  limited  for  him ;  he  had  been 
only  a  shiftless  misfit.  But  on  the  East  Side  of  New 
York  his  distorted  talents  found  a  market.  He  had 
sold  them  to  Tammany  Hall.  His  wife's  money  had  been 
wasted  in  a  legitimate  business  enterprise  for  which 
he  had  no  fitness.  A  defalcation  had  caused  his  arrest, 
the  District  Leader  had  saved  him  from  jail,  and  David 
found  the  niche  into  which  he  fitted.  He  was  nominal 
owner  of  The  Sioux  Hotel  —  a  saloon  of  the  worst 
repute.  The  profits  of  vice  are  large,  but  those  "  higher 
up"  always  claim  the  lion's  share.  And  as  David  had 
taken  to  drink  —  a  rare  vice  among  the  Jews  —  his 
wife  and  her  three  children  were  having  a  very  miserable 
time  of  it. 

Perhaps  it  was  the  wound  across  his  forehead  which 
made  it  difficult  for  Benjamin  to  see  clearly.  About 
all  he  seemed  to  realize  was  that  his  sister  could  not 


8  COMRADE  YETTA 

afford  to  live  comfortably.  He  had  brought  with 
him  a  few  thousand  dollars,  the  wreck  of  his  father's 
fortune,  and,  by  offering  to  pay  liberally  for  a 
room  and  board,  he  enabled  his  sister  to  move  into  a 
better  flat  and  so  dulled  the  edge  of  her  poverty. 
Some  instinctive  wisdom  made  him  resist  David's 
impassioned  appeals  to  invest  his  money  in  The  Sioux 
Hotel. 

But  he  was  no  more  of  a  business  man  than  his 
brother-in-law,  and  before  long,  seduced  by  his  passion 
for  reading,  he  was  persuaded  to  buy  the  second-hand 
book-store. 

It  was  a  dark  basement.  There  were  only  a  few 
hours  a  day  when  one  could  read,  even  in  the  front, 
without  a  lamp.  But  it  was  Yetta's  home.  To  be 
sure,  she  and  her  father  slept  at  the  Goldstein's  flat  and 
had  breakfast  there.  But  by  seven  they  were  in  the 
book-store.  For  lunch  they  had  tea  and  buns  from  the 
coffee-house  upstairs,  and  at  six  o'clock  Yetta  brought 
their  dinner  from  her  aunt's  in  a  pail.  At  first  the 
place  had  seemed  to  Yetta  very  large,  and  the  darkness 
in  the  back  limitless  and  fearsome.  Once,  when  her 
father  had  gone  back  there  and  she  could  not  see  him, 
she  had  become  frightened  and  called  him.  He, 
laughing  at  her  timidity,  had  taken  her  in  his  arms  and 
they  had  explored  all  the  dark  corners  by  candle-light. 
She  always  remembered  the  sense  of  relief  which  had 
come  to  her  when  she  realized  how  small  it  was. 

Benjamin  was  thirty-four  when  this  change  in  his  life 
took  place.  With  his  scholarly  turn  of  mind,  it  did 
not  take  him  long  to  learn  to  read  English  fluently. 
But  in  his  store  on  East  Broadway  he  had  little  chance 
to  speak  the  new  language.  Few  of  his  customers 


BENJAMIN'S  BOOK-STORE  9 

spoke  anything  but  Russian  or  Yiddish.  Yetta  always 
found  it  hard  not  to  pronounce  "book"  "buk."  This 
was  the  first  word  her  father  taught  her.  He  was  an 
insistent  teacher.  He  realized  his  own  inability  to 
become  an  active  unit  in  the  seething,  incomprehensible 
life  about  him.  His  explorations  of  the  new  world 
were  meagre.  He  was  tied  to  the  store  except  on 
Saturday  afternoons,  and  he  could  not  desecrate  the 
Sabbath  by  trolley  rides.  The  poverty  and  misery 
which  he  could  not  ignore,  he  thought  of  as  local. 
The  unhappy  lot  of  his  people  was  due  to  their  igno 
rance,  their  inability  to  understand  the  new  language, 
their  age-old  habits  of  semiserfdom.  But  with  Yetta 
it  was  to  be  different !  She  was  to  be  fitted  for  full 
participation  in  the  rich  life  of  perfect  freedom.  He 
put  especial  emphasis  on  the  language. 

There  were  few  things  which  made  him  outspokenly 
angry.  The  principal  ones  were  the  Jewish  papers. 
Yiddish  was  to  him  the  language  of  the  Koyna  Ghetto, 
the  language  of  persecutions  and  pogroms.  The  pure 
Hebrew  of  the  Scriptures  —  Yes  !  —  he  would  have 
every  child  of  the  Race  know  that.  He  taught  it  to 
Yetta.  It  was  the  reservoir  of  all  the  rich  traditions 
and  richer  promises.  But  Yiddish  was  a  bastard  jargon 
which  his  people  had  learned  in  captivity.  It  held  no 
treasures  of  the  past,  no  future  hope.  Let  his  people 
supplement  the  language  of  their  forefathers  by  one  of 
freedom.  Let  them  learn  the  speech  of  the  land  of 
Refuge.  His  contempt  for  Yiddish,  of  course,  isolated 
him  from  everything  vital  in  the  life  of  the  East  Side, 
and  drove  him  back  farther  into  his  dreams  and  to 
Yetta. 

As  soon  as  she  was  old  enough  she  went  to  the  closely 


10  COMRADE  YETTA 

packed  public  school  near  by.  While  she  was  away, 
he  read  hungrily.  He  had  cleared  a  shelf  in  the  darkest 
corner  of  the  store,  and  there  he  put  by  all  the  books 
which  pleased  him  —  those  he  wanted  her  to  read  when 
she  grew  old  enough.  They  were  not  for  sale.  Yetta 
got  very  little  play  during  her  childhood.  Back  in  the 
store,  after  school  hours,  she  perched  up  on  a  high  stool 
beside  her  father  and  went  over  her  lessons  with  him. 

At  the  end  of  the  first  year  Benjamin's  bank  account 
had  decreased  by  five  hundred  dollars.  It  had  been 
a  rare  month  when  the  total  sales  had  equalled  the 
month's  rent  and  living  expenses.  But  he  was  not  de 
pressed.  A  customer  asked  him  one  time  about  his 
business. 

" Although  I  do  not  sell  many  books,"  Benjamin 
replied,  "  I  have  much  time  to  read." 

The  second  year  would  have  been  worse  except  for 
the  lucky  chance  which  secured  him  the  agency  for 
some  Russian  newspapers  and  considerably  increased 
his  income.  If  he  had  not  so  stubbornly  refused  to 
have  anything  to  do  with  Yiddish,  the  store  might 
have  become  prosperous,  for  he  gradually  learned 
the  business  and  grew  to  use  some  judgment  in  re 
plenishing  his  stock.  His  quaint  philosophy  attracted 
a  little  group  of  admirers.  Even  if  they  did  not  en 
tirely  accept  his  dreams,  they  liked  to  hear  him  talk 
about  them. 

In  this  environment  Yetta  grew  into  girlhood. 
Every  day  when  her  school  work  was  finished  she  read 
aloud  to  her  father  from  the  books  he  had  placed  on  the 
reserved  shelf.  It  was  a  planless  mixture  —  a  History 
of  the  Jews,  Motley  and  Prescott,  Shakespeare  and 
Dickens  and  Emerson. 


BENJAMIN'S  BOOK-STORE  11 

The  last  thing  she  read  to  him  was  a  three-volume 
edition  of  Les  Miserables.  She  was  fifteen  then,  and 
her  reading  was  frequently  interrupted  by  his  coughs. 
Perhaps  he  had  caught  it  from  the  lad  who  was  racing 
with  death  to  graduate  from  the  Encyclopedia.  Ben 
jamin's  friends  shook  their  heads  mournfully.  But 
he  expected  to  recover  soon;  was  he  not  taking  his 
" patent  medicine"  regularly?  And  so  to  the  wonder 
ful  symphony  of  Hugo's  masterpiece  Benjamin  coughed 
out  his  life.  The  third  volume  was  read,  not  in  the 
little  store,  but  in  their  bedroom  in  the  Goldstein's 
flat.  It  was  the  last  book  Yetta  read  for  several  years. 
When  it  was  finished,  she  had  begun  to  be  afraid ;  she 
did  not  have  the  courage  to  begin  a  new  book.  He 
was  too  sick  to  listen. 


CHAPTER  II 

YETTA'S  GIRLHOOD 

THE  death  of  her  father  was  a  greater  catastrophe 
to  Yetta  than  she  realized.  She  felt  only  the  personal 
loss.  Her  uncle  took  care  of  the  financial  matters,  sold 
the  book-store,  and  so  forth.  When  the  funeral  ex 
penses  were  paid,  he  said  there  was  nothing  left. 
Coming  back  from  the  cemetery,  her  aunt,  in  as 
kindly  a  manner  as  was  possible  to  so  woe-begone  and 
soured  a  woman,  tried  to  explain  to  her  what  it  meant 
to  be  penniless.  Leave  school?  Go  to  work?  She 
hardly  listened.  Her  sorrow  was  too  real,  too  wild 
and  incoherent. 

The  Goldsteins  had  three  children.  Isaac  was 
eighteen.  Two  years  before  he  had  graduated  from 
the  House  of  Refuge  —  a  pickpocket  of  parts.  He  had 
his  ups  and  downs,  but  on  the  whole  he  found  money 
"easy,"  and  hardly  a  week  passed  when  he  did  not 
hand  his  mother  a  few  dollars. 

The  twin  daughters  of  sixteen  were  working  and 
brought  their  wages  home.  Rosa  was  anaemic,  quer 
ulous,  and  unattractive.  She  worked  "bei  button 
holes."  A  slight  curvature  of  the  spine,  which  had 
become  apparent  in  her  childhood,  had  developed  into 
a  pitiful  deformity  after  the  years  bent  over  a  machine. 

12 


YETTA'S  GIRLHOOD  13 

Rachel  had  monopolized  all  the  charms  of  health  and 
good  spirits  which  should  have  been  divided  between 
them.  Her  face  looked  much  younger  than  Rosa's, 
but  her  body  had  developed  into  a  pleasing  woman 
hood  wliich  had  been  entirely  denied  her  sister.  She 
was  not  beautiful,  but  she  was  red  blooded,  merry,  and 
likable.  She  was  a  milliner  and  earned  twice  as  much 
as  Rosa. 

So  the  Goldsteins  should  have  been  fairly  pros 
perous,  but  the  father's  craving  for  alcohol  had  grown 
more  rapidly  than  the  earning  capacity  of  his  children. 
Poverty  had  weighed  too  heavily  on  Mrs.  Goldstein 
to  allow  her  to  tolerate  an  idler,  and  besides  she  had 
always  looked  with  disapproval  on  Yetta's  unwomanly 
education.  It  seemed  almost  impious  to  her  to  have 
a  girl  in  school.  She  had  perjured  herself  blissfully 
about  the  age  of  her  own  daughters  to  avoid  the  Truant 
Officer.  For  a  few  days  the  family  left  Yetta  alone 
in  her  room  to  cry.  Then  they  jerked  her  out  of  the 
stupor  of  her  grief,  and  threw  her  into  the  cauldron 
of  modern  industry. 

Rachel  had  seen  a  sign  which  advertised  the  need  of 
" beginners"  in  the  Vest  Trade.  Yetta  followed  her 
docilely  up  two  flights  of  dirty  stairs  into  a  long  work 
room,  which  had  been  made  by  knocking  the  parti 
tions  out  of  a  tenement-house  flat.  It  was  a  gloomy 
place,  for  the  side  windows  were  faced  by  a  dingy 
brick  wall  three  feet  away.  The  end  windows  looked 
out  on  Allen  Street.  The  tracks  of  the  elevated  were 
on  a  level  with  the  floor,  and  every  few  minutes  the 
light  which  might  have  been  expected  from  this  quarter 
was  cut  off  by  the  rush  of  a  train.  Artificial  illumina 
tion  was  needed  all  the  year  round. 


14  COMRADE  YETTA 

In  the  street  below  children  shouted  and  cried ;  push 
cart  peddlers  hawked  their  wares  in  strident,  rasping 
voices ;  heavy  trucks,  loaded  with  clattering  milk-cans, 
rattled  deafeningly  over  the  cobblestones.  The  chaos 
of  noise  caught  in  the  narrow  canon  of  the  street  seemed 
to  unaccustomed  ears  a  pandemonium  which  must  be 
audible  in  high  heaven. 

But  none  of  this  noise  entered  the  long  dark  room 
two  flights  up.  At  one  end  of  the  shop  a  cheap  electric 
motor  threw  its  energy  into  two  revolving  shafts  along 
the  ceiling ;  these  in  turn  passed  it  down  a  maze  of 
roaring  belts  to  a  dozen  sewing-machines  —  all  twelve 
going  at  top  speed.  It  sounded  as  if  no  one  of  the 
many  bearings  in  the  room  had  been  oiled,  as  if  each 
of  the  innumerable  cogs  in  the  machines  were  a  misfit. 
The  sound  seemed  like  a  tangible  substance  which 
could  be  felt.  There  was  no  room  left  in  the  shop  for 
the  noises  of  the  street.  If  Gabriel  had  blown  his  horn 
on  the  sidewalk  below,  the  silent  women  bent  over  the 
speeding  machines  would  not  have  heard  —  they 
would  have  missed  the  Resurrection. 

Dazed  by  this  strange  and  fearsome  environment, 
Yetta  caught  tight  hold  of  her  cousin's  hand.  But 
Hachel,  the  adventurous,  would  not  have  been  dis 
mayed  in  Daniel's  den  of  lions.  She  boldly  led  the 
way  into  the  "  office."  Half  a  dozen  women,  all  older, 
were  already  in  line.  The  boss  —  a  rotund,  narrow- 
eyed  man  —  was  looking  them  over.  But  as  soon  as 
he  saw  the  young  girls  he  lost  interest  in  the  women. 

"This  is  my  cousin,  Yetta  Rayefsky,"  Rachel  said. 
"  She'd  make  a  good  beginner." 

"Afraid  of  work?"  he  asked  gruffly. 

Yetta  was  speechlessly  afraid  of  everything.     But 


YETTA'S  GIRLHOOD  15 

Rachel  answered  for  her  —  a  flood  of  extravagant, 
high-pitched  eulogy. 

"One  dollar  a  week,  while  she's  learning.  Regular 
piece  price  when  she  gets  a  machine." 

One  of  the  older  women,  seeing  the  hopelessness  of 
her  own  situation,  —  all  the  bosses  preferred  youth,  — • 
began  to  wail. 

"Shut  up  !"  the  boss  growled.  "I  will  take  the  girl. 
Get  out,  all  of  you." 

So  Yetta  was  employed.  At  first  the  work  consisted 
of  carrying,  piling,  and  wrapping  bundles  of  vests.  The 
loads  were  very  heavy  for  her  unpractised  back.  But 
she  managed  to  live  through  the  first  day,  and  the  next, 
and  gradually  got  used  to  it.  After  a  long  wait  she 
was  put  at  a  machine. 

Even  in  such  grossly  mechanical  work  as  sweat-shop 
labor,  brains  and  youth  count.  Yetta's  fingers  were 
still  plastic.  Before  long  she  had  mastered  the  routine 
movements.  Above  all,  she  proved  quicker  than  the 
other  women  in  such  emergencies  as  a  broken  thread. 
In  less  time  than  usual  she  worked  to  the  top  and  be 
came  the  "speeder,"  drawing  almost  double  pay. 

During  the  years  which  followed,  while  all  that  part 
of  her  brain  which  had  to  do  with  manual  dexterity 
was  keenly  alive,  the  rest  —  the  part  of  her  brain  in 
which  her  father  had  been  interested  —  went  to  sleep. 
It  was  inevitable.  Perhaps  if  she  had  been  older 
when  the  crisis  came,  she  might  have  made  a  struggle 
against  her  environment.  She  might  have  resisted  her 
weariness  for  an  hour  or  so  after  she  came  home,  might 
have  propped  her  eyes  open  and  continued  her  studies, 
but  she  was  only  fifteen. 

At  first,  while  still  a  "beginner,"  her  earnings  were 


16  COMRADE  YETTA 

so  small  that  there  was  some  measure  of  charity  in  her 
aunt's  sheltering  of  her.  She  was  constantly  reminded 
of  the  need  of  increasing  her  wages.  But  before  this 
incentive  had  passed,  before  her  pay  began  to  amount 
to  a  fair  charge  for  her  board  and  lodging,  before  her 
spirit  had  recovered  from  the  lethargy  which  had  fol 
lowed  the  loss  of  her  father,  she  had  been  taken  captive 
by  "Speed."  It  was  the  keynote  of  her  waking  life. 
Every  detail  of  the  sweat-shop,  the  talk  of  her  table 
mates,  the  groaning  song  of  the  belts  —  even  the 
vitiated  air  —  were  "  suggestions "  beating  in  on  her 
plastic  consciousness,  urging  ever  increasing  rapidity. 

It  had  become  a  habit  for  her  to  hand  over  all  her 
wages  to  her  aunt.  She  had  her  father's  lack  of  guile 
and  less  experience.  The  bedroom  which  Benjamin 
had  shared  with  his  daughter  was  rented  to  a  stranger. 
Yetta  had  to  sleep  in  the  same  bed  with  the  twins. 
She  had  to  wear  their  outgrown  clothes.  But  even  if 
she  had  realized  how  little  she  was  getting  in  exchange 
for  her  wages,  she  would  not  have  had  the  courage  to 
go  out  among  strangers.  And  she  had  not  sufficient 
energy  —  after  all  the  machine  took  —  to  argue  about 
it  with  her  bitter,  hardened  aunt. 

The  drab  monotony  of  her  sweat-shop  life  was  un 
broken.  The  bosses  changed  frequently.  So  did  the 
workers.  But  the  process  was  unchanged  —  except 
that  each  new  boss  shaved  the  price  per  piece  and 
pushed  up  the  rate  of  speed.  And  then,  after  three 
years,  a  little  flickering  gleam  of  sunshine  fell  on  Yetta's 
face.  Rachel  went  to  a  ball. 

Mrs.  Goldstein  objected  to  " dance-halls "  because 
she  was  old  fashioned  and  knew  nothing  about  them. 
Mr.  Goldstein  objected  because  he  knew  them  all  too 


YETTA'S  GIRLHOOD  17 

well.  So  when  Rachel  announced  one  night  at  supper 
that  she  was  going  to  "The  Mask  and  Civic  Ball  of 
the  Hester  Street  Democratic  Club/'  a  storm  broke 
loose.  Mr.  Goldstein  —  none  too  gently  —  threw  his 
daughter  into  the  bedroom  and  locked  the  door.  Later 
in  the  evening  he  came  home  a  shade  more  drunk 
than  usual.  Smashing  some  furniture  to  wake  the 
household,  he  delivered  a  speech  on  the  text  of  female 
respectability  and  where  he  would  rather  see  his 
daughter  than  in  a  dance-hall.  The  "grave"  was  the 
least  unattractive  place  he  mentioned.  Rachel  seemed 
to  give  in  before  the  family  wrath. 

But  in  her  trade  there  were  frequent  rush  periods 
when  it  was  necessary  to  work  after  supper.  One 
night  she  came  home  unusually  late.  As  soon  as  she 
had  put  out  the  light  and  crawled  into  bed,  she  woke 
up  the  two  girls  and  confided  to  them  in  great  excite 
ment  that  she  had  been  to  a  ball.  A  girl  in  her  shop 
had  lent  her  some  finery,  a  shirtwaist,  a  pair  of  white 
shoes,  and  a  hat.  Of  course  one  could  not  go  to  a  dance 
in  a  shawl.  It  had  been  "something  grand."  She 
kept  them  awake  a  long  time  telling  of  the  fine  dresses, 
the  "swell"  music,  and  the  good-looking  men.  She 
was  too  "mad  about  it"  to  sleep.  She  jumped  out  of 
bed  and,  humming  a  popular  tune,  danced  a  waltz  for 
them  in  her  nightgown.  She  was  very  sleepy  in  the 
morning,  but  the  music  was  still  in  her  ears.  The  other 
girls  were  rather  dismayed  by  her  rank  disobedience. 
The  morose  and  spiteful  Rosa  threatened  to  tell  her 
father.  Rachel  herself  became  frightened  at  this  and 
promised  never  to  do  it  again. 

But  not  many  days  passed  before  Rachel  announced 
at  supper  that  she  would  have  to  work  late  that  night. 


18  COMRADE  YETTA 

Somehow  Yetta  knew  it  was  a  pretext.  She  could 
hardly  get  to  sleep.  She  woke  up  the  moment  Rachel 
tiptoed  into  the  room. 

"You've  been  again,"  she  said. 

"Sure.     But  don't  wake  up  Rosa." 

"It's  very  wrong." 

It  may  be  that  Rachel,  who  was  only  nineteen  and 
had  been  brought  up  blindfolded,  did  not  see  any 
thing  wrong  in  the  two  dances  she  had  attended. 
There  are  many  perfectly  respectable  dances  on  the 
East  Side.  Fate  may  have  led  her  to  such.  Or  per 
haps  she  glossed  over  dangers  she  had  seen.  She 
denied  Yetta's  charge.  Rosa  snored  regularly  beside 
them,  while  the  two  girls  whispered  half  the  night 
through. 

Rachel's  defence,  although  some  of  it  was  only  half 
expressed,  —  she  was  not  used  to  talking  frankly  about 
holy  things,  —  was  sound.  After  all,  women  do  not 
come  into  the  world  to  spend  their  lives  in  sweat-shops. 
They  ought  to  marry  and  bear  children.  What  chance 
did  she  have  ?  She  saw  no  men  in  her  factory.  It 
might  be  all  right  to  leave  such  things  to  one's  parents 
—  if  they  were  the  right  kind.  But  every  one  knew 
her  father  was  a  penniless,  shiftless  drunkard.  What 
sort  of  a  match  could  he  arrange  for  her  ? 

She  was  going  to  as  many  dances  as  she  could. 
First  of  all,  they  were  fun,  and  precious  little  fun  did 
she  get  trimming  hats  for  other  women  to  wear.  And 
then  —  well  —  she  was  not  ugly.  Perhaps  some  nice 
young  man  would  marry  her.  That  very  evening  a 
"swell  fellow"  had  danced  with  her  four  times.  He 
had  wanted  to  walk  home  with  her.  But  she  would 
not  let  him  do  that,  till  she  was  sure  he  was  "serious." 


YETTA'S  GIRLHOOD  19 

She  would  see  him  again  at  a  dance  on  Saturday  night, 
and  she  would  find  out.  What  other  chance  had  she  ? 
Her  father  could  do  nothing  for  her.  Nor  her  mother. 
Nor  her  brother.  Well  —  she  was  of  age,  she  would 
do  for  herself. 

"And  if  I  was  as  swell  looking  as  you  are,  Yetta," 
she  said,  "I'd  sure  get  a  winner.  Why  don't  you  come 
to  a  dance  with  me  ?" 

The  next  day  at  the  lunch  hour  Yetta  overheard 
some  of  the  girls  talking  about  dances.  Instead  of 
going  off  by  herself,  as  she  generally  did,  to  consecrate 
her  few  minutes  of  leisure  to  memories  of  her  father, 
she  sat  down  and  listened  to  them.  Yetta  did  not 
know  how  to  dance.  But  the  next  time  a  hurdy-gurdy 
came  by  at  noon,  she  began  with  the  help  of  her  shop- 
mates  to  learn.  Although  she  made  rapid  progress, 
although  she  listened  eagerly  to  Rachel's  account  of 
stolen  gayeties,  she  did  not  give  in  to  her  cousin's 
urgings.  Her  natural  timidity,  joined  to  a  habit  of 
obedience,  kept  her  from  going  to  a  dance. 

But  a  new  element  had  come  into  her  life.  She 
began  to  feel  that  in  some  shameful  way  she  was  being 
defrauded.  Was  she  to  know  nothing  of  Life  but  the 
sweat-shop?  Was  her  youth  to  slip  away  uselessly? 
Since  Rachel  had  spoken  of  her  looks,  she  sometimes 
lingered  before  the  mirrors  in  store  windows  and 
wondered  if  her  smooth  skin  was  doomed  to  turn 
wrinkled  and  yellow  like  that  of  the  women  at  her 
table.  Was  she  never  to  have  children  ?  The  future, 
which  she  had  never  thought  about  before,  began  to 
look  dark  and  fearsome.  She  did  not  feel  that  any 
thing  of  lasting  good  could  be  gained  by  sneaking  out 
to  a  ball,  but  at  least,  as  Rachel  said,  it  must  be  fun. 


20  COMRADE  YETTA 

Was  she  never  to  have  any  fun  ?  Were  the  years  — 
one  after  another  —  to  creep  by  without  music  or 
laughter  ?  Sooner  or  later  the  craving  for  a  larger 
life  would  have  forced  her  out  to  adventure  with 
Rachel,  but  the  temptress  was  suddenly  removed. 

Isaac  Goldstein  encountered  his  sister  at  a  dance. 
He  had  not  been  home  for  more  than  a  week,  but  he 
came  the  next  day  and  told  his  parents.  When  Rachel 
came  in  from  work  that  evening,  the  drunken  father 
denounced  her  as  a  disgrace  to  his  fair  name.  Rachel 
listened  in  sullen  silence  to  his  foul  abuse  until,  enraged 
by  his  own  eloquence,  he  struck  her.  She  turned  very 
white  and  then  suddenly  laughed. 

"Good-by,  Yetta  and  Rosie!"  And  then,  clench 
ing  her  fist  at  her  father,  she  cried  out :  "  And  you  — 
you  go  to  Hell." 

She  slammed  the  door  behind  her  and  never  came 
back. 

David  Goldstein  did  not  often  trouble  to  go  to  the 
Synagogue,  but  the  next  Friday  night  he  put  on  his 
old  frock-coat  and  frayed  silk  hat  and  in  the  meeting 
house  of  the  men  of  Kovna,  he  read  the  Service  for 
the  Dead  over  his  pleasure-loving  daughter. 

Yetta  was  surprised  to  find  how  much  she  missed 
her  cousin.  To  be  sure  she  had  not  seen  much  of  her 

—  they  worked  in  different  shops.     But  since  they  had 
shared  this  secret  together,  it  had  seemed  almost  like 
having  a  friend.     It  had  never  been  a  joyous  house 
hold,  and  now  with  Rachel's  occasional  laughs  gone  it 
was  bleak  indeed. 

But  these  confidences,  short-lived  as  they  were,  had 

—  in  spite  of  their  tragic  ending  —  done  their  work 
with  Yetta.     They  had  suddenly  opened  a  window  in 


YETTA'S  GIRLHOOD  21 

the  wall  of  the  dark  room  where  she  lived.  Through 
it  she  saw,  as  through  a  glass  darkly,  a  fair  garden, 
lit  with  the  sunlight  of  laughter,  a  garden  where 
blossomed  the  wondrous  flowers  of  music,  of  joy  —  of 
Romance. 

Since  the  recent  development  of  "  Child  Study," 
since  grave  and  erudite  professors  have  written  learned 
volumes  on  the  subject  of  "Play,"  many  things,  which 
former  generations  thought  lightly  of,  have  taken  on 
importance.  In  the  gurgling  of  a  month-old  baby  we 
now  see  an  experimentation  with,  a  training  of,  the 
vocal  apparatus  which  may  later  win  the  plaudits  of 
a  crowded  opera  or  sway  the  council  chamber  of  a 
nation.  It  is  no  longer  senseless  and  rather  disgusting 
noise.  It  is  part  of  the  profound  development  of  Man. 
The  haphazard  muscular  reflexes  of  a  five-year-old  boy 
—  the  running  violently  to  nowhere  in  particular,  the 
jumping  over  nothing  at  all  —  is  no  longer,  as  our 
grandfathers  held,  an  aimless  and  sometimes  bother 
some  amusement.  A  human  being  is  getting  ac 
quainted  with  the  intricate  system  of  nerve  complexes 
and  motor-muscles  which  is  to  carry  him  through  his 
allotted  work  in  the  world.  And  the  little  girl  with 
her  sawdust  doll  has  become  a  portentous  thing.  If 
she  does  not  learn  to  hold  it  properly  at  seven,  her  real 
babies,  when  she  is  twenty-seven,  are  likely  to  fare  badly. 

Yetta  had  never  had  dolls.  There  had  been  no 
younger  children  in  her  household.  She  had  never 
associated  with  boys.  In  a  starved,  vicarious  way, 
through  the  confidence  of  Rachel,  she  had  begun  to 
"play"  with  the  ideas  of  marriage,  of  home-making, 
of  babies.  An  unrest,  the  cause  of  which  she  did  not 
guess,  had  invaded  her.  She  was  just  coming  into 


22  COMRADE  YETTA 

womanhood.  Nature  was  working  deep  and  momen 
tous  changes  in  her  being.  It  is  a  transition  which 
may  be  beautiful  and  joyous  if  freedom  for  play  is 
given  to  the  developing  organs  and  nerve-centres. 
Because  of  her  starved  childhood  it  came  to  Yetta  late 
and  abruptly.  She  was  becoming  a  woman  in  an 
environment  where  nobody  wanted  anything  but 
wage-earning  "hands."  And  so  to  her  it  meant  er 
ratic  moods  of  black  despair,  of  uncontrolled  and 
ludicrous  lyricisms,  of  sudden  and  senseless  timidities, 
abnormal,  insane  desires. 

Unless  something  happened,  her  womanhood  was  to 
be  wasted.  She  had  sore  need  of  a  Prince  in  Silver 
Armor.  But  no  Princes  go  about  nowadays  rescuing 
fair  damsels  from  the  Ogre  Greed.  However,  Rachel 
had  opened  a  window  on  a  quasi-fairyland  where,  if 
there  were  no  bona  fide  princes,  there  were  at  least 
some  ' '  swell-looking  men. ' '  And  j ust  as  she  was  getting 
intoxicated  with  the  wonderful  vision,  the  window  was 
slammed  shut  in  her  face. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE   SWEAT-SHOP 

THE  sudden  closing  of  the  window  made  her  prison 
cell  seem  darker  than  before.  It  needed  the  contrast 
of  the  vision  to  make  her  see  the  sordidness  and  squalor 
—  the  grim  reality  —  of  that  long  dark  room,  with 
its  chaos  of  noise,  its  nerve- destroying  " speed." 

Scattered  through  the  East  Side  of  New  York  there 
are  hundreds  such  " sweat-shops,"  engaged  in  the 
various  branches  of  the  "  garment  trade."  Sometimes 
there  will  be  half  a  dozen  in  the  same  tenement ;  one 
above  another.  Even  the  factory  inspectors  are  never 
sure  of  the  exact  number.  They  are  running  so  close 
a  race  with  bankruptcy,  it  is  hard  to  keep  track  of 
them.  Often  half  a  dozen  will  fail  on  the  same  day, 
and  as  many  new  ones  will  start  the  next.  It  is  not 
on  record  that  any  one  ever  found  a  good  word  to 
say  for  the  " sweating  system."  Such  " shops"  exist 
because  I  and  you  and  the  good  wife  and  the  priest 
who  married  you  like  to  buy  our  clothes  as  cheaply 
as  possible. 

Yetta's  "shop"  manufactured  vests.  The  four 
women  at  each  table  formed  a  "team."  With  separate 
operations  on  the  same  garment,  they  had  to  keep  in 
exact  unison.  If  any  one  slowed  up,  they  all  lost 

23 


24  COMRADE  YETTA 

money  by  the  delay.  They  were  paid  "by  the  piece/' 
and  long  hours,  seven  days  a  week,  brought  them  so 
infinitesimal  a  margin  over  the  cost  of  brute  necessities 
that  the  loss  of  a  few  cents  a  day  was  a  tragedy  for  the 
older  women  with  children  to  feed. 

Yetta,  the  youngest  of  all,  was  Number  One  at  her 
table. 

The  name  of  Number  Two  was  Mrs.  Levy.  She  was 
anywhere  between  twenty-five  and  fifty,  bovine  in 
appearance,  but  her  fingers  were  as  agile  as  a  monkey's. 
She  sat  stolidly  before  her  machine,  her  big  body, 
which  had  lost  all  form,  almost  motionless,  her  arms 
alone  active.  Her  face  was  void  of  any  expression. 
Her  washed-out  eyes  were  half  closed,  for  they  were 
inflamed  with  tracoma.  Eight  years  before  she  had 
brought  her  three  children  over  from  Galicia  to  join 
her  husband  and  had  found  him  dying  of  tuberculosis. 
She  had  been  making  vests  ever  since.  She  was  an 
ideal  sweat-shop  worker,  reliable  —  the  kind  that 
lasts. 

Opposite  her  Mrs.  Weinstein  grabbed  the  vests  as 
they  left  Mrs.  Levy's  machine.  She  also  was  a  large 
woman,  but  not  much  over  thirty,  and  just  entering 
the  trade.  She  was  of  merry  disposition  and  had  kept 
much  of  her  youthful  charm.  Her  hair,  of  course,  was 
disordered ;  the  cloth-dust  stuck  in  blotches  to  her  per 
spiring  face.  There  was  a  smudge  of  machine  grease 
over  one  cheek,  but  where  her  blouse  —  unbuttoned  — 
exposed  her  throat  and  the  rise  of  her  breasts,  the  skin 
was  still  soft  and  white.  Her  husband,  of  whom  she 
always  spoke  with  fond  admiration  as  a  very  kind  and 
wise  man,  had  deserted  her  a  few  months  before. 
Engaged  in  another  branch  of  the  garment  trades, 


THE  SWEAT-SHOP  25 

he  had  become  involved  in  one  of  the  strikes  which 
with  increasing  frequency  were  shaking  the  sweating 
system.  He  had  been  black-listed.  After  weeks  of 
fruitless  search  for  work,  he  had  disappeared.  If 
he  found  work  elsewhere,  he  would  send  for  his  wife. 
He  could  not  bear  to  stay  and  be  supported  by  her. 
She  had  a  sister,  who  had  married  well  and  who  would 
not  let  the  babies  starve.  Besides,  she  did  not  con 
sider  herself  a  regular  vest-maker.  Some  day,  soon, 
her  husband  would  find  work,  in  Boston,  Philadelphia 
—  somewhere.  She  was  always  expecting  a  letter  to 
morrow.  So  Mrs.  Weinstein  could  afford  to  be  cheerful. 

But  if  Number  Two  had  an  unusually  stolid  body 
and  phlegmatic  brain  —  the  type  which  suffers  least 
from  sweating;  and  if  Number  Three  had  been 
blessed  with  a  merry,  hopeful  soul,  Mrs.  Cohen,  at  the 
foot  of  the  table,  had  none  of  these  advantages.  She 
had  been  Number  One,  not  so  very  long  before  —  a 
marvel  of  speed.  Then  she  had  begun  to  cough.  It 
is  impossible  to  cough  without  breaking  the  regular 
rhythm  which  means  speed.  In  a  few  months  she  had 
slipped  down  to  the  bottom.  She  was  no  older  than 
Mrs.  Weinstein,  but  her  skin  was  as  yellow  as  Mrs. 
Levy's,  and  even  more  unlovely,  for  the  flesh  behind  it 
had  melted  away ;  the  only  prominences  on  her  body 
were  where  her  bones  pushed  out. 

She  had  begun  at  twenty-one,  when  her  husband 
died  leaving  her  with  two  children.  There  had  been 
another  baby  a  couple  of  years  later  —  because  she  had 
hoped  the  man  would  marry  her  and  take  her  out  of 
the  inferno.  He  had  not.  And  there  was  no  hope  any 
more,  for  who  would  marry  a  woman  with  bad  lungs 
and  three  children  ? 


26  COMRADE   YETTA 

Despair,  while  embittering  her,  had  cleared  her  vision. 
She  saw  the  "shop"  and  the  " system"  —  and  under 
stood.  She  had  entered  the  trade  strong  and  healthy, 
and  had  been  well-paid  at  first,  when  she  had  the 
great  desideratum  —  Speed.  It  had  seemed  like  good 
pay  then.  But  now  she  knew  better.  They  had  been 
buying  not  only  her  day-by-day  ability,  they  had 
bought  up  her  future.  For  the  wages  of  less  than  ten 
years  they  had  bought  all  her  life  —  they  had  bought 
even  her  children  !  Already  the  flow  of  vests  had  piled 
up  once  or  twice  too  swiftly  for  her.  Jake  Goldfogle, 
the  present  boss,  was  threatening  to  discharge  her. 
If  she  lost  this  job,  it  would  be  the  end.  The  Gerry 
Society  would  surely  take  her  babies  and  put  them 
in  " institutions."  No,  she  had  not  been  well-paid 
in  the  days  when  they  had  given  her  extra  wages  for 
the  pace  that  kills.  It  is  small  pleasure  for  a  mother 
to  hush  the  hunger-cry  of  her  children,  but  that  was  all 
the  joy  that  was  left  to  Mrs.  Cohen.  And  if  she  lost 
her  job,  she  would  lose  even  this. 

Just  in  proportion  as  Number  Four  at  the  bottom 
of  the  table  had  learned  many  bitter  things  from  life, 
so  Yetta  at  the  head  had  almost  everything  yet  to 
learn.  She  began  the  long  lesson  with  a  pain  in  her 
back. 

It  came  unexpectedly.  It  was  as  much  the  insulting 
surprise  of  it,  as  the  hurt  itself,  which  made  her  cry 
out  sharply  and  drop  her  work  —  throwing  the  whole 
team  out  of  rhythm. 

"Wos  is  dir,  Yetta?"  Mrs.  Weinstein  asked  with 
motherly  solicitude. 

"Oy-yoy-yoy  •"  Yetta  said,  putting  her  hand  to  her 
back  —  "Es  is  schon  verbei." 


THE   SWEAT-SHOP  27 

Mrs.  Cohen  at  the  bottom  of  the  table  laughed 
mirthlessly. 

"It  will  come  back/'  she  screamed  in  Yiddish  above 
the  din  of  the  machinery.  "I  know.  It  begins  so. 
One  speeds  two,  three  years  —  four  —  with  one  it  is 
the  lungs,  with  another  it  is  the  back,  or  the  eyes." 
She  seized  the  momentary  pause  to  ease  herself  with 
coughs. 

Mrs.  Levy,  who  had  been  long  in  the  trade,  had  seen 
many  a  " speeder"  give  in ;  some  slowly,  some  suddenly. 
She  had  seen  dozens  of  them,  fighting  desperately  the 
fight  for  food,  slip  down  from  the  head  to  the  foot  and 
out  —  out  through  the  door  to  the  street  and  nowhere. 
As  Mrs.  Cohen  had  said,  it  was  sometimes  the  eyes, 
sometimes  the  lungs,  sometimes  the  back.  She  nodded 
her  head  in  affirmation.  Oh  yes,  she  had  seen  it  many 
times.  She  could  have  told  the  story  of  one  mother 
who  had  gone  on  speeding  in  spite  of  back  and  lungs 
and  eyes,  had  kept  on  speeding  until  one  day  she  had 
fallen  over  her  machine  dead.  Her  hair  had  gotten 
tangled  in  the  cogs,  and  they  had  to  cut  it  to  take  her 
away. 

Mrs.  Weinstein  tried  to  comfort  Yetta. 

"Don't  listen  to  them,"  she  said.  "You  are  yet 
young  —  you'll  be  all  right  - 

She  stopped  abruptly,  for  the  office  door  had  opened 
and  Jake  Goldfogle  came  out.  His  ear,  trained  to 
the  chaotic  noise  of  the  shop,  had  caught  the  momen 
tary  halt. 

"O&er,  mein  Gott,  wos  is  der  mer?"  he  roared. 

Mrs.  Cohen,  who  had  caught  up  with  her  work  and 
was  waiting  for  more,  pointed  an  accusing  finger  at 
Yetta. 


28  COMRADE  YETTA 

Jake  Goldfogle  was  twenty-eight.  This  was  his  first 
"shop."  The  dominant  expression  of  his  face  — 
which  he  tried  to  cover  with  an  assumption  of  master 
liness  —  was  worry.  The  person  who  has  been  ground 
by  poverty  is  never  a  debonaire  gambler.  But  these 
ignorant,  unimaginative  women  who  slaved  for  him, 
whom  he  lashed  with  his  tongue  and  sometimes  struck, 
did  not  understand  his  situation,  did  not  know  of  the 
myriad  nightmares  which  haunted  his  waking  as  well 
as  his  sleeping  hours.  They  bent  low  over  their  ma 
chines,  hurrying  under  the  eye  of  the  master,  holding 
their  breath  to  catch  the  torrent  of  abuse  they  expected 
to  hear  fall  on  Yetta. 

They  did  not  realize  —  least  of  all  did  Yetta  —  that 
she  was  an  exception.  Jake  swallowed  the  curses  on 
his  tongue  and  asked  her  in  a  constrained  and  un 
familiar  voice  what  was  wrong. 

" Nothing,"  she  said.     "A  pain  in  my  back." 

No  sort  of  pain  known  to  women  was  considered  a 
valid  excuse  for  breaking  speed.  She  wondered  with 
sullen,  servile  anger  how  much  he  would  fine  her.  If 
any  of  the  women  had  looked  up,  they  would  have 
seen  strange  twists  on  the  boss's  face.  He  turned 
abruptly,  without  a  word,  and  went  back  to  his  office. 
He  sat  down  at  his  desk  and  looked  through  the  little 
window,  by  means  of  which  he  could,  glancing  up  from 
his  ledger,  spy  on  the  roomful  of  workers.  His  eyes 
rested  a  moment  on  Yetta's  stooped  back.  Then, 
grasping  his  temples,  he  paced  up  and  down  his  dingy 
office,  cursing  the  day  he  was  born.  He  was  in  love 
with  Yetta  and  could  not  afford  to  tell  her  so. 

The  psychology  of  the  refugees  from  Russian  and 
Galician  Ghettos,  who  come  to  live  among  us,  is  very 


THE   SWEAT-SHOP  29 

hard  for  us  to  understand.  Above  all,  the  Jew  is 
marked  by  single-mindedness  and  consistency  of  pur 
pose.  We  have  our  Anglo-Saxon  tradition  of  compro 
mise  and  confused  issues.  We  have  generally  several 
irons  in  the  fire.  We  shift  easily  —  often  flippantly 
—  from  one  purpose  to  another.  The  Semite,  having 
once  accepted  a  goal  is  hard  to  divert. 

Coming  to  us,  as  most  of  them  do,  in  abject  poverty, 
it  is  small  wonder  that  many  a  Jewish  lad  decides  that 
the  Holy  Grail  is  made  of  American  dollars.  The 
surprising  thing  is  the  unswerving  fidelity  with  which 
they  follow  the  quest  —  a  fidelity  which  is  quite  ab 
sent  in  the  legends  of  King  Arthur's  English  Knights. 
It  is  the  same  no  matter  what  ideal  they  choose.  Just 
as  the  money  grubber  will  deny  himself  necessary  food 
and  overwork  his  wife  and  children  to  amass  a  little 
capital,  so  the  East  Side  poet  will  stick  to  writing 
rhymes  in  Yiddish,  although  it  can  never  give  him 
a  decent  living,  and  the  Jewish  Socialist  will  hold 
fast  to  his  principles  through  starvation  and  perse 
cution. 

Jake  Goldfogle  had  a  vague  recollection  of  a  great 
wave  which  had  washed  over  the  steerage  deck  of  an 
immigrant  steamer  and  had  scared  him  immensely. 
All  his  other  memories  were  set  in  the  scenery  of  the 
New  York  slums.  He  had  "got  wise"  young,  with 
the  wisdom  of  the  gutter,  which  says  that  you  must 
be  either  a  hammer  or  an  anvil,  preyed  upon  or 
preying.  For  the  last  fifteen  years  he  and  his  sister, 
more  recently  reenforced  by  her  husband,  had  been 
engaged  in  a  desperate  struggle  to  pull  up  out  of  the 
muck. 

For  years  the  three  of  them  had  been  slaves  to  the 


30  COMRADE  YETTA 

machine.  Six  months  before  they  had  put  all  their 
miserable  savings,  all  their  credit,  into  buying  this 
"shop."  They  had  accepted  a  highly  speculative 
contract  from  which  there  could  be  no  halfway  issue. 
A  dozen  weeks  more  and  it  would  be  over  —  either  an 
immense  success  or  utter  ruin.  Failure  meant  the 
swallowing  up  in  a  moment  of  the  results  of  their  long 
slavery ;  it  meant  going  back  to  the  machine. 

Hundreds  of  men  throughout  the  city,  in  the  differ 
ent  garment  trades,  were  in  exactly  the  same  position. 
Ground  between  the  gambling  nature  of  their  con 
tracts  and  insufficiently  secured  credit,  the  fear  of  ruin 
in  their  hearts,  they  had  been  driving  the  rowels  deeper 
and  deeper  into  the  flanks  of  the  animals  who  worked 
for  them  —  on  whose  backs  they  hoped  to  win  to  the 
gilded  goal  of  success.  But  revolt  from  such  condi 
tions  was  inevitable.  Strikes  were  constantly  occur 
ring.  This  fear  was  the  worst  of  Jake  Goldfogle's 
nightmares. 

The  revolt  of  the  garment  workers  was  as  yet  un 
organized  and  chaotic.  There  were  a  dozen  odd 
unions,  but  few  of  them  were  strong  or  well  disciplined. 
Too  many  of  those  in  the  trade  were  immigrants  from 
southeastern  Europe  and  the  Russian  Pale  —  where 
only  a  few  of  the  men  are  literate.  Most  of  them 
were  women  —  mothers.  When  the  long  hours  in  the 
shops  were  over,  they  hurried  home  to  their  children. 
It  was  very  hard  to  get  them  to  meetings. 

But  in  spite  of  all  these  handicaps  the  workers  were 
gradually  organizing.  Such  strikes  as  had  already 
occurred  had  had  little  effect  except  to  ruin  the  smaller 
bosses.  The  large  manufacturers  could  afford  to  wait 
until  their  " hands"  were  starved  back  to  the  machines. 


THE  SWEAT-SHOP  31 

But  so  close  was  the  contest,  —  it  mattered  little 
whether  the  trade  was  vests  or  shirtwaists  or  overalls,  — 
that  a  few  days'  interruption  was  enough  to  ruin  the 
weaker  bosses.  The  small  fry,  like  Jake,  echoed  the 
sentiments  of  Le  Grand  Monarque  —  The  Deluge  might 
come  after,  if  only  they  could  speed  their  contracts 
to  completion.  And  so,  with  ever  increasing  vicious- 
ness,  the  rowels  were  driven  deeper  and  deeper. 

It  had  been  a  surprising  sensation  to  Jake  Goldfogle 
to  discover  that  it  was  more  pleasant  to  look  through 
his  spying  window  at  the  curve  of  Yetta's  neck  and 
the  wild  little  curls  of  rich  brown  hair  that  clustered 
about  it  than  to  add  up  columns  of  figures.  Even  the 
unhealthy,  stooped  curve  of  her  spine  as  she  leaned 
forward  to  the  machine  seemed  gracious  to  him.  He 
looked  forward  eagerly  to  the  times,  every  half  hour, 
when  he  went  out  into  the  shop  on  a  tour  of  inspection, 
for  then  he  could  catch  glimpses  of  her  face.  To  be 
sure  she  never  looked  up  from  her  work  while  he  was 
watching.  But  there  was  one  place  where  he  could 
stand  unnoticed  and  see  her  in  profile.  It  was  a  mar 
vellously  regular  face  for  the  East  Side.  The  dark 
curve  of  her  eyebrows  was  perfect,  and  sometimes 
he  could  catch  the  gleam  of  her  eyes.  The  skin  of 
her  throat  was  whiter  even  than  Mrs.  Weinstein's. 
She  was  a  trifle  thinner  than  Jake's  ideal  —  but  he 
told  himself  she  would  fill  out.  All  this  added  color 
to  his  dream  of  success,  a  deeper  shade  to  his  fear  of 
ruin. 

A  man  of  another  race  would  probably  have  lost 
his  head  and  asked  her  to  marry  him.  But  Jake  had 
a  deep-seated  habit  of  planning  for  success.  Long 
before  he  had  noticed  the  grace  of  her  body  and  face 


32  COMRADE  YETTA 

he  had  realized  that  she  was  the  best  worker  in  his 
shop,  "the  pace-maker"  for  the  whole  establishment. 
If  success  was  to  be  won,  it  would  be  by  just  that  very 
narrow  margin,  which  the  breaking  in  of  a  new 
" speeder"  would  jeopardize.  So  he  had  tried  to  put 
her  out  of  his  mind  till  the  "rush  season"  was  over. 
Intent  on  his  main  purpose  he  had  not  thought  of  her 
physical  well-being.  She  was  young  and  healthy 
looking.  It  had  not  occurred  to  him  that  a  few  weeks 
more  or  less  would  matter.  The  pain  in  her  back  sur 
prised  him. 

If  the  incident  had  occurred  in  the  morning,  he  might 
have  called  her  into  his  office  then  and  there  and  asked 
her  to  marry  him.  Things  had  looked  brighter  in  the 
morning.  But  at  lunch  —  a  frugal  affair,  two  sweet 
buns  and  a  glass  of  tea  —  he  had  heard  disquieting 
talk  of  the  "skirt-finishers"  strike.  It  had  been  more 
serious  than  most.  Half  a  dozen  shops  had  been  al 
ready  wiped  out.  And  his  informant  —  a  hated  com 
petitor  —  had  gloomily  foretold  trouble  in  their  own 
trade.  If  strikes  broke  out  among  the  "vest-makers," 
it  would  tighten  credit.  The  call  of  a  couple  of  loans 
would  be  the  end  of  Jake.  No  !  He  could  not  afford 
to  take  Yetta  out  now.  Any  one  who  came  to  take 
her  place  might  be  infected  with  the  virus  of  Unionism. 
His  own  women  did  not  know  what  a  strike  was.  No. 
He  could  not  risk  it.  If  Pincus  &  Company  paid 
promptly  on  the  next  delivery,  he  could  take  up  those 
dangerous  loans  and  then  —  perhaps  — 

He  put  his  face  close  to  the  spying  window  and 
looked  out  at  Yetta's  back.  He  wondered  just  where 
the  pain  had  been  and  whether  it  still  hurt. 

"Poor  little  girl,"  he  said. 


THE  SWEAT-SHOP  33 

But  Yetta  knew  nothing  of  her  boss's  intention.  She 
could  see  no  outlet.  The  future  stretched  before  her, 
so  barren  that  it  hurt  to  think  of  it.  But  she  could 
not  escape  the  thought.  Was  she  to  get  fat  and  ugly 
like  Mrs.  Levy?  Would  the  pain  come  again  and 
would  she  slip  down  —  as  Mrs.  Cohen  prophesied  — 
coughing  herself  to  uselessness? 


CHAPTER   IV 

LIFE    CALLS 

IN  the  months  that  followed  Rachel's  departure 
Yetta  began  to  lose  hope.  She  could  see  no  promise  of 
escape,  and  lethargic  time  gradually  faded  the  colors 
of  her  dream.  The  flame  of  holy  discontent  which 
had  blazed  for  a  while  in  her  soul  threatened  to  go  out. 
Sometimes  she  wondered  what  had  happened  to  Rachel. 
But  "  Speed  "  eats  up  a  person's  power  of  wondering. 

Yetta  had  been  at  the  machine  for  a  long  time  now. 
Her  muscles  had  become  hardened.  She  did  not  often 
suffer  from  weariness  any  more,  but  she  had,  without 
knowing  it,  commenced  to  go  downhill.  The  im 
mense  reserve  of  vitality,  which  is  the  blessing  of  so 
many  of  her  race,  was  running  low.  It  was  amazing 
how  her  strong  young  body  had  resisted  the  strain. 
But  any  doctor  would  have  shaken  his  head  over  the 
future.  After  all  there  is  a  limit,  beyond  which  the 
nerves  and  muscles  of  a  woman  cannot  compete  with 
electricity  and  steel. 

One  night,  a  few  days  after  the  pain  had  come  in  her 
back,  an  American  woman  knocked  at  the  door  of  the 
Goldstein  flat  while  Yetta  and  Rosa  were  eating  supper. 

"I'm  a  neighbor  of  yours,"  she  said.  "My  name  is 
Miss  Brail.  I've  come  to  get  acquainted." 

34 


LIFE   CALLS  35 

Mrs.  Goldstein  looked  up  hostilely  from  her  sewing. 
Rosa,  surly  as  usual,  went  on  with  her  eating.  But 
Yetta  offered  the  intruder  her  chair.  The  visitor 
seemed  used  to  such  cold  receptions;  she  sat  down 
placidly  and  tried  violently  to  establish  more  friendly 
relations. 

She  and  some  other  women  had  rented  the  house 
across  the  street  and  were  going  to  live  there.  It 
was  to  be  a  sort  of  a  school.  First  of  all  they  were 
going  to  start  a  kindergarten  and  day  nursery  for  the 
children  of  women  who  worked.  Rosa  interrupted 
harshly  that  there  were  no  children  in  their  household. 
Miss  Brail  refused  to  be  rebuffed.  They  were  also  go 
ing  to  have  a  sewing  school  for  young  women.  Rosa, 
who  had  accepted  the  responsibility  of  the  conversa 
tion,  although  she  had  not  stopped  eating,  said  that 
she  and  Yetta  sewed  all  day  long  and  did  not  need  to 
learn. 

"Well,"  Miss  Brail  continued  bravely,  "we  will 
have  a  cooking-class  too." 

Rosa  replied  that  her  mother  cooked  for  them. 

"But  don't  you  want  to  know  how  to  cook  yourself  ? 
Some  day  you'll  have  a  home  of  your  own,  and  it  will 
be  worth  while  to  know  how  to  cook  good  meals  cheaply. 
Why,  if  the  wife  only  knows  how  to  buy  scientifically 
and  understands  a  little  of  food  values,  you  can  feed 
the  ordinary  family  on  only  — " 

But  once  more  Rosa  interrupted  her.  She  had 
finished  her  meal  and,  emptying  her  tea-cup  with  a 
noisy  sip,  she  stood  up  in  her  gaunt,  twisted  unlove- 
liness. 

"Do  you  think  any  one's  going  to  marry  me?"  she 
asked  defiantly. 


36  COMRADE  YETTA 

Miss  Brail  did  not  have  the  heart  to  answer  the 
question  truthfully.  She  turned  towards  Yetta,  who 
—  confused  by  the  implication  of  her  look  —  hung 
her  head  and  blushed.  Rosa  laughed  scornfully. 

"She  ain't  got  no  money.  Nobody'd  marry  a  girl 
for  her  looks,  even  if  she  could  cook." 

At  this  blasphemy  against  Romance,  Miss  Brail 
became  eloquent.  She  was  very  definitely  unmarried 
herself.  But  not  so  much  an  "old  maid"  as  a  new 
woman.  It  would  have  been  impossible  to  picture  her 
fondling  a  cat.  She  was  almost  athletic  in  her  build, 
her  hair  was  combed  to  hide  the  few  streaks  of  gray, 
her  eyes  were  young  and  full  of  fire.  Her  tailor-made 
suit  was  attractive;  in  a  very  modern,  businesslike 
way,  even  coquettish.  You  could  not  look  at  her 
without  feeling  that  no  one  was  to  blame  but  her 
self  that  she  was  unmarried.  She  delivered  an  im 
passioned  harangue  on  the  subject  of  men.  Of  course 
there  were  soulless  brutes  who  would  marry  only  for 
money.  But  the  right  sort  of  a  man  would  just  as 
soon  take  a  poor  girl  as  a  rich  one  if  he  really  loved  her. 
She  knew  lots  of  that  kind.  They  were  going  to  have 
clubs  and  classes  for  young  men  in  the  house  across  the 
way  —  she  called  it  The  Neighborhood  House.  And 
once  a  month  they  would  have  dances.  She  invited 
Rosa  and  Yetta  to  come. 

At  the  word  "dance,"  Mrs.  Goldstein  stopped  sewing, 
and  sticking  her  needle  in  her  wig,  got  up  threaten 
ingly.  No  !  Neither  her  daughter  nor  her  niece  would 
go  to  a  dance.  With  her  bony  hand  she  pointed 
emphatically  at  the  door.  Miss  Brail  protested  that 
the  Neighborhood  House  dances  would  be  eminently 
respectable ;  only  the  young  men  and  women  they 


LIFE  CALLS  37 

knew  personally.  She  tried  to  say  that  it  was  good 
to  give  the  girls  a  chance  to  meet  men  in  clean,  orderly 
surroundings.  But  she  could  not  resist  the  old  woman's 
wrath,  and  at  last,  shrugging  her  shoulders  in  defeat, 
she  went  out. 

Mr.  Goldstein,  when  he  heard  of  the  incident,  added 
his  curses  to  those  of  his  wife.  Dances  had  been  the 
ruin  of  one  daughter,  and  that  was  enough  disaster  for 
a  self-respecting  family.  Besides,  these  Goyim  were 
trying  to  undermine  the  True  Religion.  David  was 
hardly  a  religious  man.  But  social  settlements  always 
took  an  interest  in  reform  politics.  Tammany  Hall 
had  small  reason  to  be  friendly  with  them.  And  as 
he  could  think  of  no  arguments,  this  religious  talk 
seemed  a  handy  weapon. 

But  all  her  uncle's  and  aunt's  denunciations  could 
not  persuade  Yetta  that  Miss  Brail  was  evil.  Morn 
ing  and  evening,  as  she  went  out  to  work  and  came 
home,  she  stopped  a  moment  on  her  doorstep  to  note 
the  progress  of  rehabilitation  in  the  house  across  the 
way.  What  the  East  Side  calls  the  " parlor  floor" 
had  formerly  been  a  store.  Its  great  plate-glass  win 
dow  was  cleaned  and  a  heavy  curtain  was  stretched 
across  the  lower  half,  so  that  people  on  the  sidewalk 
could  not  look  in.  White  dimity  curtains  were  hung 
in  the  upstairs  windows.  The  fine  old  front  door  was 
painted  white,  the  rusted  banister  of  the  steps  was  re 
placed  by  a  new  and  graceful  one  of  polished  steel. 
Before  long  the  " residents"  moved  in.  Their  arrival 
coincided  with  the  appearance  of  beautiful  potted 
plants  inside  the  windows. 

Although  the  screen  hid  the  front  parlor  from  the 
street,  it  was  not  high  enough  to  hide  it  from  the 


38  COMRADE  YETTA 

windows  of  the  Goldstein's  flat.  From  that  vantage- 
point  Yetta  learned  the  routine  of  evening  work  in 
the  Settlement.  A  bulletin-board  beside  the  door 
helped  her  to  put  names  to  the  things  she  saw.  On 
Monday  nights  there  were  meetings  of  "The  Martha 
Washington  Club."  They  were  young  women  of  her 
own  age,  and  Miss  Brail  presided.  There  was  gener 
ally  some  "  uptown  woman"  who  spoke  or  sang  to 
the  girls.  This  part  of  the  evening's  entertainment 
lasted  until  nine,  then  they  grouped  about  Miss  Brail 
at  the  piano  and  practised  some  choral  music.  They 
ended  with  half  an  hour's  dancing  and  went  home  a 
little  after  ten.  Tuesday  night  there  was  a  club  of 
boys.  Wednesday  night  a  class  in  sewing.  Thursday 
night  "The  Abraham  Lincoln  Debating  Club"  held 
forth.  Most  of  them  were  young  men  in  the  early 
twenties,  but  a  few  were  older.  On  Friday  there  was 
a  "Mothers'  Club, "  and  on  Saturday  night  a  magic- 
lantern  show. 

At  last  it  came  time  for  the  monthly  dance.  Yetta 
had  noticed  the  announcement  on  the  bill-board  several 
days  before.  On  the  eventful  night  she  pretended  to 
be  sleepy  and  went  to  bed  early,  but  as  soon  as  Rosa 
began  to  snore  she  wrapped  herself  in  her  shawl  and 
a  blanket  and  tiptoed  out  into  the  front  room  to  watch 
the  ball.  The  Martha  Washington  Club  had  turned 
out  in  force,  dazzlingly  beautiful  in  their  best  clothes. 
The  black-suited  young  men  of  the  debating  club  also 
looked  very  wonderful  to  the  hungry-eyed  girl  who 
watched  it  from  afar.  As  was  the  strange  custom  of 
The  Krists,  the  big  window  was  opened  although  it  was 
mid-February,  and  the  sound  of  the  four-piece  orchestra 
and  the  laughter  came  up,  unobstructed,  to  Yetta's  ears. 


LIFE  CALLS  39 

She  had  never  been  so  happy  in  all  her  life,  but  most 
of  the  time  her  eyes  were  filled  with  tears.  She 
imagined  herself  first  as  one  of  the  girls  and  then  as 
another.  There  was  one  whose  shirtwaist  seemed 
especially  beautiful.  Yetta  was  convinced  that  if 
she  were  a  millionnaire,  or  if  a  fairy  godmother  should 
offer  her  one  choice,  she  would  choose  just  such  clothes. 
There  was  one  of  the  young  men,  a  curly-haired,  laugh 
ing  fellow,  whom  she  had  noticed  on  Thursday  nights. 
Whenever  he  took  part  in  the  debates,  all  the  other 
men  clapped  violently.  Generally  she  imagined  her 
self  dancing  with  him. 

After  a  while  the  music  stopped.  Miss  Brail  and  the 
other  settlement  women  brought  in  trays  loaded  with 
lemonade  and  sandwiches  and  cakes.  The  curly- 
haired  man  sat  down  beside  the  girl  in  the  resplendent 
waist.  Hot  little  blushes  chased  themselves  all  over 
Yetta's  body.  It  frightened  her  even  to  imagine 
that  she  was  so  gayly  dressed,  that  such  a  man  sat 
close  to  her  and  whispered  in  her  ear,  looking  at  her 
and  laughing  all  the  time. 

The  supper  fire  had  not  yet  burned  down  in  the 
Goldstein's  sordid  kitchen-eating-sitting  room.  It  was 
stuffy  and  hot,  but  Yetta,  in  spite  of  her  shawl  and 
blanket,  shivered  when  the  intermission  was  over. 
The  curly-haired  man  nonchalantly  put  his  arm  about 
the  gorgeous  shirtwaist  and,  with  his  face  rather  close  to 
his  partner's,  swung  off  into  a  dizzy  two-step.  Yetta 
felt  as  if  she  had  been  suddenly  caressed.  She  had  to 
grit  her  teeth  to  keep  them  from  chattering. 

A  tremendous  storm  had  broken  out  in  the  breast  of 
the  little  sweat-shop  girl.  Sometimes  she  had  to  close 
her  eyes,  the  beauty  of  the  vision  was  so  dazzling. 


40  COMRADE  YETTA 

For  a  moment  she  would  tear  herself  away  from  the 
blighting  memory  of  reality,  and  her  soul  seemed  to  float 
away  from  her  body  into  the  brightly  lit  room  across 
the  way.  In  the  most  deeply  spiritual  sense  she  be 
came  part  of  that  gay  scene.  She  was  arrayed  in 
gorgeous  clothes.  Men  —  even  the  wonderful  curly- 
haired  man  —  sought  her  as  a  partner.  And  she  could 
laugh  ! 

But  the  Blessed  Angel  of  Forgetfulness  is  —  like 
her  sister,  the  Spirit  of  Delight  —  an  inconstant 
hussy.  No  Wise  Man  of  all  the  ages  has  learned  the 
trick  of  keeping  her  always  at  his  side. 

The  memories  of  the  day's  stark  realities  would  sub 
merge  Yetta.  Back  of  her  was  the  squalid  flat,  the 
snores  of  her  loveless  relatives.  In  her  dark  bedroom 
her  one  frayed  dress  was  hung  over  the  back  of  a 
chair,  waiting  for  her  to  put  it  on  and  hurry  through 
the  dawn  to  Jake  Goldfogle's  Vest  Shop.  Routine  — 
hopeless  monotony  !  A  prison  tread  —  from  the  viti 
ated  air  and  uneasy  sleep  of  the  tenement,  so  many 
steps  to  the  cruel  speed  and  inhumanity  of  the  Ma 
chine.  Then  so  many  steps  back  to  the  tenement, 
and  all  to  do  over  again. 

In  front  of  her  —  in  the  room  across  the  street 
—  "Life-as-it-might-be."  Beauty  —  thrilling  excite 
ment  —  joy ! 

The  eyes  of  Yetta's  soul  swung  back  and  forth  from 
one  vision  to  the  other.  Through  the  long  evening  she 
knelt  there  by  the  window,  so  forgetful  of  her  body 
that  she  did  not  realize  how  the  dirty  window  ledge 
was  cutting  into  her  elbows,  how  her  knees  were  being 
bruised  on  the  unswept  floor. 

At  last  the  musicians  put  away  their  instruments. 


LIFE    CALLS  41 

Every  one  clapped  insistently  and  crowded  about  Miss 
Brail.  But  she  waved  her  watch  in  their  face.  A 
distant  church-bell  tolled  midnight.  Yetta  stayed  r 
at  her  post  until  the  last  laughing  couple  had  shaken 
hands  with  the  ladies  at  the  door.  For  several  minutes 
more  she  watched  the  shadows  on  the  upper  win 
dows,  while  the  "  residents "  talked  over  the  success 
of  the  dance.  She  watched  till  the  last  light  was  out, 
then  she  crept  back  to  bed  and  cried  herself  to  sleep. 

The  tears  she  shed  that  night  were  not  the  kind  that 
heal.  There  was  acid  in  them  which  ate  into  the 
quick.  For  nearly  four  years  her  body  had  been  on 
the  rack.  Now  her  soul  was  being  torn.  The  question 
ings  which  had  troubled  her  after  Rachel's  disappear 
ance  became  more  and  more  insistent.  Was  she  never 
to  know  what  joy  meant?  Was  day  to  crawl  along 
after  day  in  desolate  and  weary  monotony?  Was  this 
dull  ache  of  soul-hunger  never  to  be  relieved  until 
some  indefinite  future  was  to  find  her  —  cheated  of 
everything  —  cast  out  useless  on  the  human  refuse 
heap?  Was  this  weary  plain  of  uneventfulness  never 
to  be  broken  by  any  dazzling  mountain  peaks  nor 
shady  valley  ? 

Shortly  after  the  Settlement  Ball,  which  Yetta  had 
watched  as  a  starveling  beggar  peers  through  a  baker's 
window,  Life  suddenly  opened  up.  The  drab  monotony 
was  illumined  by  a  lurid  display  of  fireworks.  Rockets 
of  glaring,  appalling  red  shot  up  into  the  night.  There 
was  a  great  white  blaze  of  hope,  and  all  the  sky  became 
suffused  by  the  soft  caressing  colors  of  unsophisticated 
Romance. 

The  sweat-shop  motor  broke  down.  Jake  Gold- 
fogle  cursed  and  tore  his  hair.  He  kept  his  " hands" 


42  COMRADE  YETTA 

waiting  in  idleness  half  through  the  afternoon,  until 
the  electricians  had  come  and  said  that  the  damage 
could  not  be  righted  till  midnight.  Then  Jake  surlily 
dismissed  his  women.  It  was  rare  that  Yetta  had 
such  a  holiday.  There  was  no  reason  for  her  to  go  to 
her  dreary  home.  It  was  a  precocious  spring  day,  the 
sun  shone  with  a  heat  that  made  the  streets  attractive. 
Wandering  about  aimlessly,  Yetta  came  to  Ham 
ilton  Fish  Park.  The  faint  suggestion  of  rising  sap 
which  came  to  her  in  that  open  space  seemed  in 
fectious.  The  questionings  which  had  disturbed  her 
returned  with  new  force.  Why?  What  did  it  all 
mean  ?  Was  there  no  escape  ? 

Suddenly  her  attention  was  caught  by  a  familiar 
figure,  Rachel,  arrayed  in  cheap  finery.  Yetta  quick 
ened  her  pace  to  overtake  her  and  called  her.  It  was 
a  great  shock  to  Rachel  when  she  recognized  her.  She 
stared  at  her  in  bewilderment,  but  it  was  surely  Yetta, 
—  Yetta  of  the  old  life,  of  the  great  sad  eyes,  with  the 
same  old  shawl  over  her  head. 

"The  motor  broke  in  my  shop,"  Yetta  explained  as 
they  sat  down.  "I  came  out  for  a  walk.  Where  are 
you  working?" 

"I  ain't  working." 

Yetta's  eyes  opened  wider. 

"Are  you  married,"  she  asked  with  awe  in  her  voice. 

Shame  closed  Rachel's  lips.  How  could  she  explain 
the  grim  dirtiness  of  Life  to  her  ignorant  little  cousin  ? 
She  started  to  get  up  and  go  away.  But  suddenly  the 
heart-break  of  it  all  —  the  memory  of  the  girlish  dreams 
she  had  confided  to  Yetta  —  overcame  her.  She  threw 
her  arms  around  her  cousin  and  cried,  great  sobs  which 
shook  them  both.  A  few  words  came  to  her  lips,  the 


LIFE  CALLS  43 

same  phrase  over  and  over:  "Oh!  Yetta.  I  wanted 
to  be  good."  When  the  first  burst  of  her  grief  was 
spent,  she  began  to  tell  how  it  had  all  come  about. 

At  first  everything  had  gone  smoothly.  She  had 
taken  a  furnished  room  with  the  girl  from  her  shop 
who  had  lent  her  the  hat  and  white  shoes  for  her  first 
dance.  "She  had  a  crush  on  me/'  Rachel  explained. 
They  had  led  a  joyous  but  quite  innocent  life,  work 
ing  hard  all  day  and  two  or  three  nights  a  week  going 
to  dances.  As  far  as  they  knew  how  to  choose  they 
went  to  respectable  places.  Several  men  had  paid 
court  to  Rachel.  A  clerk  in  a  dry-goods  store  on  Sixth 
Avenue  had  been  in  love  with  her.  He  was  serious. 
But  he  was  earning  very  little,  had  a  marriageable 
sister,  and  wanted  to  wait  a  couple  of  years.  She  had 
even  become  engaged  to  one  man.  At  first,  she  said, 
she  had  "been  crazy  about  him."  She  had  let  him  kiss 
her  and  make  pretty  violent  love  to  her.  But  after  a 
while  she  saw  he  was  "a  spender,"  too  free  with  his 
money  —  like  her  father.  She  did  not  want  a  man 
like  that,  so  she  had  sent  him  about  his  business. 
Then  her  room-mate  "got  a  crush"  on  another  girl 
and  had  left  Rachel  alone  in  the  furnished  room. 

"What  can  you  do?"  —  she  began  to  cry  again  — 
"when  you  ain't  got  no  place  to  have  your  friend  call 
except  a  furnished  room?  All  alone?  A  girl  ain't 
got  no  chance  —  all  alone  —  like  that." 

She  could  not  tell  Yetta  what  came  next,  so  she  asked 
about  the  family.  As  Yetta  told  her  meagre  store  of 
news,  the  flood-gates  of  Rachel's  bitter  heart  opened. 
She  cursed  her  family.  They  were  to  blame  for  her 
disaster.  Why  had  not  her  father  made  a  decent  home 
for  his  children?  Was  it  her  fault  that  her  brother 


44  COMRADE  YETTA 

was  a  crook?  If  they  had  been  honest  and  thrifty, 
they  could  have  given  her  a  marriage  portion.  Worse 
than  doing  nothing  for  her,  they  had  even  eaten  up 
her  wages.  If  she  had  been  an  orphan,  she  could  have 
put  some  of  her  pay  in  the  bank  —  she  could  have 
saved  enough  money  to  get  married  on. 

"  Don't  you  let  them  cheat  you,  Yetta,"  she  broke 
out,  "the  way  they  cheated  me.  Perhaps  I'm  a  bad 
woman,  but  I  never  cheated  little  girls  the  way  they 
cheated  us.  I  never  robbed  an  orphan  like  they  done 
to  you.  You're  a  fool  to  stand  for  it.  Why  should 
you  give  them  your  wages?  Haven't  they  cheated 
you  enough?  They  made  your  poor  father  pay  too 
much  board.  The  funeral  never  cost  like  they  said 
it  did.  And  now  they're  stealing  your  wages.  I  tell 
you  what  you  do.  You  find  some  good  woman  in 
your  shop,  who'll  take  you  to  board,  and  put  your 
money  in  the  bank.  But  don't  go  to  no  l  furnished 
room.'  Furnished  rooms  is  Hell !  You  — " 

"  Hello,  Ray.     Introduce  me  to  your  friend." 

The  intruder's  voice  sent  a  convulsive  shiver  through 
Rachel.  He  wore  a  suit  of  dove-gray,  the  cuffs  and 
collar  of  which  were  bound  with  silk  braid.  There 
was  a  large  diamond  in  his  scarlet  tie.  As  though 
he  did  not  wish  to  be  outdone  by  the  sun  in  its 
premature  glory  he  wore  a  slightly  soiled  Panama  hat, 
shaped  after  the  fashion  depicted  in  photographs  of 
the  German  Crown  Prince. 

"I  say,"  he  insisted,  and  there  was  a  twang  of  menace 
in  his  soft  voice,  a  more  evident  threat  in  his  hard 
domineering  eyes,  "I  say,  introduce  me  to  your  friend." 

"  She's  my  cousin,  Yetta  Ray ef sky,"  Rachel  replied 
reluctantly. 


LIFE  CALLS  45 

"And  my  name,"  he  said  with  easy  assurance,  "is 
Harry  Klein.  I'm  glad  to  make  your  acquaint 
ance,  Miss  Rayefsky.  Do  you  dance  as  well  as  your 
cousin?" 

"I've  never  been  to  a  dance/'  Yetta  stammered. 

She  was  very  much  flustered  by  his  stare  of  frank 
admiration.  No  man  had  ever  put  a  "Miss"  to  her 
name  before.  Again  the  hot  blushes  chased  them 
selves  over  her  body.  But  he  did  not  seem  to  notice 
her  embarrassment. 

"I  was  walking  along  the  street,"  he  said,  "and 
noticed  Miss  Goldstein  here  in  the  Park.  I  came  to 
ask  her  to  go  to  the  Tim  Sullivan  ball  with  me  to 
night.  Won't  you  come  along  ?" 

"She  ain't  got  no  clothes  for  a  ball,"  Rachel  said. 

"I'm  sure,"  he  said,  his  eyes  turning  hard  again, 
"that  you  could  lend  her  some." 

But  Yetta  was  frightened  beyond  words  at  the  bare 
idea  of  going.  She  refused  timidly. 

Harry  Klein  urged  her,  managing  gracefully  the  while 
to  weave  in  the  story  of  his  life.  He  was  a  commercial 
traveller  for  a  large  silk-house  on  Broadway.  Of 
course  it  was  very  good  pay,  and  in  a  few  months  he 
was  to  be  taken  into  the  firm,  but  it  had  its  inconven 
iences.  He  did  not  get  to  New  York  very  often.  He 
liked  dances,  but  it  was  no  fun  to  go  alone.  Being  away 
so  much,  he  did  not  know  many  nice  girls.  He  had  no 
use  for  the  kind  you  can  "pick  up"  at  a  ball.  He  did 
wish  she  could  come.  He  knew  another  travelling 
man  who  was  also  in  town  —  a  friend  of  his.  It  would 
be  great  fun  for  the  four  of  them  to  go  together. 

But  he  did  not  push  his  urgings  too  far.  He  was 
sorry  she  would  not  come,  but  he  hoped  Miss  Goldstein 


46  COMRADE  YETTA 

could  find  a  partner  for  his  friend.     Would  she  come 
now  on  that  errand  ? 

"I'm  sorry  to  run  away  with  your  cousin,  Miss 
Rayefsky,"  he  said,  signalling  Rachel  to  get  up.  "And 
I  sure  hope  I'll  have  the  pleasure  of  meeting  you  again. " 

He  bowed  very  low,  made  a  gallant  flourish  with  his 
hat,  and  taking  Rachel  by  the  arm,  started  off  gayly. 
But  he  turned  back  after  a  few  steps. 

"I'm  not  going  to  be  discouraged,"  he  said  with  his 
very  best  smile,  "  because  you  won't  go  with  me  to-night. 
I  like  your  looks  and  want  to  get  acquainted  with  you. 
I'll  see  you  again." 

Once  more  he  flourished  his  hat,  and  rejoined  Rachel. 

Yetta  sat  still  on  the  park  bench  for  a  long  time 
after  they  had  gone.  She  tried  to  make  some  sense  out 
of  Life.  But  it  was  all  very  perplexing.  What  did 
Rachel's  story  mean  ?  In  a  vague  way  she  had  heard 
of  the  women  who  are  called  "bad."  She  knew  their 
more  blatant  hall-marks.  Rachel's  cheeks  were 
painted ;  she  had  spoken  of  herself  as  "bad."  But  the 
term  did  not  mean  anything  to  Yetta  which  could  in 
clude  a  girl  like  her  cousin i'^ho  "wanted  to  be  good." 
She  understood  that  Rachel  was  unhappy,  bitter,  and 
very  much  ashamed,  but  she  could  not  think  of  her  as 
sinful  or  vicious.  She  tried  —  but  entirely  in  vain  — 
to  imagine  what  sort  of  life  Rachel  was  leading.  She 
tried  to  picture  in  what  sort  of  acts  her  "badness" 
consisted.  She  had  heard  somewhere  of  "selling  love, " 
but  she  had  no  idea  how  it  was  done.  It  was  very 
perplexing  for  her  —  indeed  it  has  perplexed  older  and 
I  wiser  heads  —  to  discover  that  "bad"  people  may  after 
[  all  be  good. 

But  it  was  hard  for  her  to  keep  her  mind  on  this 


LIFE  CALLS  47 

problem  of  ethics.  It  was  very  much  easier  to  think 
of  Harry  Klein.  She  had  never  talked  to  so  courteous 
and  well  dressed  a  gentleman.  The  dream  of  the  curly- 
haired  debater  was  wiped  from  her  mind  —  Harry 
Klein  was  much  better  looking. 

A  queer  question  shot  into  her  mind.  Did  a  girl 
have  to  be  "bad"  to  have  such  enchanting  friends? 
No.  That  could  not  be.  He  had  wanted  to  be  friends 
with  her.  She  knew  she  was  not  bad. 

He  had  said  he  wanted  to  be  her  friend  !  The  blood 
raced  through  her  veins  at  the  thought.  She  went  over 
again  in  her  mind  all  her  arguments  with  Rachel. 
The  only  possible  way  to  escape  from  the  sweat-shop 
was  to  marry.  Of  course  she  could  not  hope  to  win  so 
debonair  a  gentleman  as  Harry  Klein.  But  rescue  — 
if  it  were  to  come  at  all  —  must  come  in  some  such  way. 
It  was  her  only  hope. 


CHAPTER  V 

HAREY   KLEIN 

WHEN  they  were  out  of  hearing,  Harry  Klein  tight 
ened  his  grip  on  Rachel's  arm. 

"Say,  Kid,  that  cousin  of  yours  is  a  peach.  Why 
didn't  you  put  me  on  before?" 

"Oh,  Jake,"  Rachel  pleaded,  "leave  her  alone. 
She  ain't  got  no  chance.  She's  only  a  kid.  She  ain't 
got  no  father  or  mother.  Oh,  Jake,  please.  Promise 
me  you'll  leave  her  alone.  There  are  lots  of  other  girls. 
She's  only  a  kid.  Please  —  " 

"Oh,  shut  your  face,"  he  growled;  "you  make  me 
tired." 

And  he  began  to  whistle  a  light-hearted  ditty. 
Rachel  might  just  as  well  have  gone  to  Jake  Goldfogle 
and  have  asked  him,  for  the  same  reasons,  not  to  drive 
her  cousin  so  hard.  She  might  just  as  well  have  asked 
you  or  me  to  pay  a  decent  price  for  our  clothes.  Harry 
Klein,  just  like  Mr.  Goldfogle  —  just  like  you  and  me 
—  needed  the  money. 

"Where's  'Blow  Away'?"  he  asked,  interrupting 
his  whistling. 

"He's  asleep,"  Rachel  said. 

"Well  —  we'll  wake  him  up." 

They  turned  down  a  side  street. 

48 


HARRY  KLEIN  49 

"Jake,"  Rachel  began  again,  "I'll  find  you  some 
other  girl  —  I'll  do  anything  for  you.  Oh,  Jake, 
please. " 

"Shut  up/'  he  growled.  "Tell  your  troubles  to  a 
policeman." 

They  went  up  three  flights  of  dirty  stairs  to  a  door 
which  Rachel  opened  with  a  latch-key.  It  gave  on  a 
long  hall.  Turning  to  the  left,  they  entered  a  parlor 
fitted  out  with  cheap  plush  furniture.  The  windows 
were  closed,  the  air  heavy  with  the  scent  of  stale  beer 
and  cigarette  smoke  —  all  the  varied  stenches  of  a 
debauch. 

"Wake  him  up,"  Jake  ordered. 

Rachel  turned  down  the  hall  and  opened  a  bedroom 
door.  The  air  was  even  worse  than  in  the  parlor.  A 
thin-chested  youth  of  twenty-eight  or  so  was  asleep, 
lying  across  the  bed  on  his  face. .  The  butt  of  a  pistol 
stuck  out  of  his  hip  pocket.  His  coat  and  vest  and 
shirt  were  on  the  back  of  a  chair,  his  shoes  on  the  floor. 

"Charlie,"  Rachel  called. 

There  was  no  response.  She  approached  the  bed 
cautiously  and  gave  a  pull  at  his  foot,  jumping  back  out 
of  reach  as  soon  as  she  had  touched  him.  There  were 
a  couple  of  angry  grunts. 

"Charlie,"  she  called  again. 

He  sat  up  with  a  roar  of  profanity. 

"How  many  times  have  I  told  you  to  leave  me  alone 
when  I'm  sleeping  ?  I'll  break  your  dirty  face  for  you." 

"Jake's  in  the  front  room,"  she  interrupted  him. 
"Wants  to  see  you." 

"Jake?"  He  lowered  the  hand  he  had  raised  to 
strike  her.  "What  in  Hell  does  he  want?" 

"How  do  I  know?" 


50  COMRADE  YETTA 

"You  never  know  nothing,"  he  growled  sourly, 
rubbing  the  sleep  from  his  eyes.  He  shuffled  down  the 
hall  in  his  stocking  feet.  When  the  great  ones  of  the 
earth  are  waiting,  you  cannot  stop  to  put  on  shoes. 

" Hello,  Blow  Away,"  Jake  said.  "I've  got  some 
thing  to  say  to  you.  Your  bundle"  —  he  indicated 
Rachel  —  "steered  me  up  to  a  honey  bunch  this  after 
noon,  named  Yetta  Rayefsky.  The  little  doll  took  my 
eye.  See?  She's  Ray's  cousin.  I  just  want  you  to 
explain  to  her  —  as  a  favor  to  me  —  that  she  mustn't 
butt  in.  The  less  talking  she  does  with  her  mouth  the 
better  it'll  be.  You'd  better  impress  it  on  her,  so  she 
won't  forget?  See?" 

Charlie  —  alias  Blow  Away  —  saw.  And  Rachel 
saw.  She  cowered  down  in  a  corner  and  promised  not 
to  warn  Yetta  —  if  only  they  would  not  beat  her.  But 
it  was  a  basic  belief  of  these  two  gentlemen  that  "a 
beating  is  never  wasted  on  a  woman.".  .  .  It  was 
from  this  time  that  Rachel  began  to  kill  herself  with 
"booze."  She  did  not  like  to  remember  how  she  had 
betrayed  Yetta.  And  drink  helped  her  to  forget. 

There  were  few  things  which  Jake,  or  Harry  Klein  — 
it  does  not  matter  what  name  we  use  for  him,  for  a 
hundred  aliases  were  on  the  back  of  his  portrait  in  the 
Rogues'  Gallery  —  there  were  not  many  things  which  he 
enjoyed  more  than  seeing  some  one  cower  before  him. 
The  servility  with  which  "Blow  Away"  had  obeyed 
his  orders,  the  wild  terror  and  passionate  pleadings  of 
Rachel,  had  tickled  the  nerves  of  his  perverted  being, 
and  he  smacked  hisjips  as  he  went  downstairs  and  out 
into  the  twilight  of  the  open  streets. 

He  was  the  recognized  leader  of  the  principal  East 
Side  "gang"  —  a  varied  assortment  of  toughs,  "strong- 


HARRY  KLEIN  51 

arm  men/'  pickpockets,  " panhandlers, "  and  pimps. 
It  must  not  be  supposed,  however,  that  these  various 
professions  were  sharply  differentiated.  There  is  a 
hoary  tradition  which  says  that  once  upon  a  time  the 
under  world  of  New  York  City  was  divided  into 
rigid  classes  and  cliques,  when  a  "dip"  looked  down  on 
a  beggar,  and  highway  robbers  had  a  professional  pride 
which  kept  them  from  associating  with  panders.  But 
in  the  year  of  grace  1903  —  when  Jake's  crooked  trail 
ran  across  Yetta's  path  —  such  delicate  distinctions, 
if  they  ever  had  existed,  were  entirely  lost.  Many  a 
man  who  claimed  to  be  a  prize-fighter  sometimes 
" stuck  up  a  drunk."  The  "flyest"  pickpocket  did  not 
disdain  the  income  to  be  derived  from  the  sale  of 
" phony"  jewellery.  It  was  no  longer  possible  to  dis 
tinguish  a  "yeggman  "  from  a  "  flopper, "  and  even  bank 
robbers  wrote  " begging  letters."  And  of  all  "easy 
money,"  the  easiest  is  from  prostitution.  There  were 
very  few  denizens  of  the  under  world  who  did  not 
have  one  or  two  women  "on  the  string."  Even  the 
legendary  aristocracy  of  forgers  had  sunk  thus  low. 
The  political  manifestation  of  the  gang  over  which 
Jake  ruled  was  the  James  B.  O'Rourke  Democratic 
Club,  of  which  he  was  president.  This  organization 
maintained,  with  the  help  of  a  subsidy  from  Fourteenth 
Street,  a  shabby  parlor  floor  club-room  on  Broome 
Street.  They  gave  one  ball  and  one  picnic  a  year.  A 
central  office  detective,  if  he  had  attended  a  meeting, 
could  have  given  a  "pedigree"  for  almost  all  the  mem 
bers.  But  the  political  bigbugs,  the  members  of  the 
city  administration,  who  sometimes  came  to  visit 
the  club,  did  not  bring  a  detective  with  them.  They 
saw  only  a  roomful  of  ardent  young  Democrats.  The 


52  COMRADE  YETTA 

good- will  of  the  club  was  an  important  asset  to  aspiring 
politicians;  the  members  would  willingly  vote  half  a 
dozen  times  for  a  candidate  they  liked. 

The  social  centre  of  the  gang  was  a  " Raines  Law" 
hotel  on  lower  Second  Avenue.  It  had  a  very  glitter 
ing  back  parlor  for  " ladies."  There,  and  in  the  Hun 
garian  Restaurant  next  door,  Jake's  followers  spent 
their  moments  of  relaxation.  The  frontier  between 
their  territory  and  that  of  hostile  gangs  was  several 
blocks  away.  The  "hang  out"  was  just  inside  the 
borders  of  a  police  precinct,  with  whose  captain  they 
had  a  treaty  of  peace. 

The  more  professional  headquarters  were  in  an  inno 
cent-looking  barber  shop  on  Chrystie  Street.  In  the 
back  there  was  a  pool  parlor.  The  lamps  were  so 
shaded  that  the  table  was  brilliantly  illumined  and  the 
rest  of  the  room  was  black.  If  you  walked  in  from  the 
brightly  lighted  shop  in  front,  you  could  not  tell  how 
many  people  were  there,  nor  how  many  pistols  were 
pointed  at  you.  From  the  toilet-room  in  the  back  there 
was  an  inconspicuous  door  into  the  alley,  which,  be 
sides  its  strategic  advantages,  led  to  the  back  door  of 
Pincus  Kahan's  pawnshop.  Much  stolen  goods  fol 
lowed  this  route. 

A  sort  of  Robin  Hood  romance  has  been  thrown 
around  the  notorious  gang  leaders  of  Lower  New  York. 
As  usual,  the  reality  back  of  the  romance  is  a  very 
sorry  thing.  Jake,  for  instance,  was  not  an  admirably 
clever,  nor  strong-willed,  nor  fearless  specimen  of  the 
genus  homo.  To  be  sure  he  excelled  many  of  his 
stunted,  defective,  and  "  cocaine-doped "  retainers  in 
these  qualities,  but  above  all  he  owed  his  position  to  a 
calculating,  patient  prudence.  Discretion  is  certainly 


HARRY  KLEIN  53 

the  better  part  of  valor  in  knavery,  and  while  most 
crooks  are  daredevils,  Jake  was  discreet. 

Since  his  first  detention  in  the  House  of  Refuge, 
Jake  had  managed  to  keep  out  of  jail.  On  his  release  he 
had  organized  a  "mob"  of  pickpockets.  Most  of  its 
members  were  boys  he  had  met  in  that  worthy  institu 
tion.  Neither  the  House  of  Refuge  nor  any  of  the  other 
" reformatories"  are  to  be  blamed  for  the  crimes  of 
those  who  have  passed  through  them.  Many  of  their 
inmates  are  taught  honorable  trades,  and  some  follow 
them  after  release.  Nearly  half  of  the  juvenile  pick 
pockets  who  gathered  about  Jake  had  never  been  ar 
rested  —  and  they  were  every  bit  as  bad  as  those  who 
had  been  in  the  House  of  Refuge. 

Owing  to  their  leader's  discretion,  this  little  "mob," 
which  had  affiliated  with  the  dominant  East  Side  Gang, 
enjoyed  an  almost  unbroken  run  of  prosperity.  But 
when  he  had  turned  eighteen,  Jake  retired  from  the 
active  practice  of  his  profession.  There  was  as  much 
money  and  more  security  in  women.  Nature  had  en 
dowed  him  with  the  necessary  external  charms.  He 
enjoyed  cleanliness,  he  was  good  looking,  and  above  all 
he  had  a  soft,  persuasive  voice. 

His  covetousness,  joined  with  a  natural  ability  at 
organization,  was  always  pushing  him  into  new  enter 
prises.     He  gathered  together  the  wreck  of  the  notori 
ous   Beggars'   Trust.     He   joined   "The   Independent 
I  Benevolent   Society,"   and   cornered   the   business   of 
;  supplying  girls  to  their  "brass  check"  houses.     One 
after  another,  he  gained  control  of  the  gang's  most 
lucrative  ventures.     Almost  any  other  man  of  the  un 
der  world  would  have  made  a  play  for  acknowledged 
leadership  long  before  Jake  did.     He  was  modest,  or, 


54  COMRADE  YETTA 

as  his  enemies  said,  a  coward.  He  waited  until  sud 
den  death  or  imprisonment  had  removed  his  principal 
rivals  —  until  the  leadership  was  practically  forced 
upon  him. 

There  were  cleverer,  more  strong-willed,  braver  men 
in  the  gang  than  he.  But  he  was  never  careless.  A 
civil  war  within  the  political  machine  had  given  him 
an  opportunity  to  make  explicit  and  profitable  treaties 
with  those  " higher  up."  He  had  sense  enough  to 
leave  "dope"  alone.  He  lacked  the  imagination  to 
have  any  sentiment  of  loyalty  or  any  sympathy,  and 
this  made  him  what  is  called  unscrupulous.  Like 
most  cowards  he  was  bitter  and  cruel  in  revenge.  He 
had  never  killed  a  man  with  his  own  hands,  but  he 
ruled  his  organization  of  " thugs"  through  fear. 

It  was  two  days  after  her  encounter  with  him  in  the 
Park  before  Yetta  saw  him  again.  As  she  came  out  of 
the  factory,  after  the  day's  work,  she  almost  ran  into  him. 

"Why,  hello,  Miss  Ray ef sky,"  he  greeted  her. 
"Your  cousin  Ray  told  me  where  you  worked.  May 
I  walk  along  with  you  ?" 

He  walked  beside  her  to  the  corner  of  the  street  where 
she  lived.  Glowing  stories  he  told  her  of  the  Ball,  how 
much  fun  he  and  Rachel  had  had,  and  how  sorry  he  was 
that  she  had  missed  it.  Really,  she  ought  to  have  come. 
What  fun  was  there  for  working  girls  if  they  did  not  go 
to  dances  ?  To  be  sure  some  girls  were  too  crazy  about 
it,  went  to  balls  every  night  and  stayed  up  too  late. 
He  disapproved  of  such  doings.  He  had  to  work. 
And  he  did  not  want  to  be  sleepy  in  the  office.  No, 
indeed  !  A  serious  young  man  with  ambitions  could 
not  afford  to  try  the  all-night  game.  He  very  seldom 
went  to  balls  except  on  Saturday  night. 


HARRY  KLEIN  55 

Harry  Klein,  alias  Jake,  had  sized  Yetta  up  and 
decided  on  the  " serious"  talk. 

It  was  several  days  before  he  turned  up  again. 
He  explained  that  he  had  been  "out  on  the  road."  In 
the  course  of  half  a  dozen  such  walks  he  opened  his 
heart  to  her.  There  was  nothing  about  himself  which 
he  did  not  tell  her.  She  knew  all  his  ambitions  and 
hopes,  the  names  of  his  influential  relatives,  the  details 
of  his  serious,  laborious  life,  and  the  amount  of  his 
balance  in  the  Bowery  Savings  Bank.  Pretty  soon  the 
" bosses"  would  keep  their  promise  and  take  him  into 
the  firm.  They  would  be  surprised  to  find  how  much 
capital  he  had  accumulated.  Meanwhile  he  was  learn 
ing  the  business  from  A  to  Z.  What  he  did  not  know 
about  silk  was  not  worth  knowing. 

To  all  this  fairy-story  Yetta  listened  with  credulous 
ears.  The  young  man  had  a  convincing  manner;  he 
was  courteous  and  well  dressed.  And  besides,  Rachel 
would  have  warned  her  if  he  had  been  bad. 

If  Yetta  had  grown  up  with  boys,  if  she  had  played 
at  courtship,  —  as  most  young  people  happily  do,  — 
she  might  have  seen  through  the  surface  glitter  of  this 
scoundrel.  She  had  no  standard  by  which  to  judge 
him. 

But  in  a  timidly  defensive  spirit  she  refused  to  go 
to  a  dance  with  him.  It  was  partly  the  instinct  of 
coquetry,  which  told  her  to  struggle  against  capture. 
It  was  more  her  humility.  When  he  said  he  liked  her, 
thought  she  was  good  looking,  wanted  "  to  be  her  steady 
fellow,"  and  so  forth,  it  made  her  throb  with  a  strange 
and  disturbing  pride.  But  it  also  made  her  distrustful 
—  it  was  too  good  to  be  true.  He  had  somewhat  over- 
colored  his  romance.  If  he  had  only  pretended  to  be  a 


56  COMRADE  YETTA 

clerk  at  $11.50  a  week  and  meagre  expectations,  it  would 
have  been  easier  to  accept.  But  why  should  this  rich 
and  brilliant  young  conqueror  want  poor,  penniless  her  ? 

It  was  not  so  much  that  she  doubted  Harry's  truthful 
ness  ;  she  found  her  good  luck  unbelievable.  And  this 
uncertainty  tormented  her.  Despite  her  lack  of  ex 
perience,  she  had  a  large  fund  of  instinctive  common 
sense.  She  realized  that  she  could  not  compromise 
with  Life.  Either  this  man  was  good,  wonderfully, 
gorgeously  good,  in  which  case  the  slightest  distrust 
was  folly  and  cruelty,  or  he  was  bad  —  then  the  small 
est  grain  of  trust  would  be  dangerous.  She  felt  herself 
utterly  unable  to  decide  wisely  so  momentous  a  ques 
tion.  She  longed  ardently  for  some  older  confidante, 
some  woman  whose  goodness  and  wisdom  she  could 
trust.  She  wished  she  knew  Miss  Brail  and  the  Settle 
ment  women.  She  was  sure  they  were  both  wise  and 
good. 

There  was  her  aunt.  In  her  desperate  extremity  she 
proposed  one  night  that  Harry  should  call  at  the  Gold 
stein's  flat.  But  when  he  refused,  she  could  not  blame 
him.  His  argument  was  good.  Her  aunt  was  sure  to 
oppose  any  one  who  threatened  to  marry  Yetta  and 
divert  her  earnings.  He  stood  on  the  street-corner 
and  urged  her  earnestly  to  leave  her  relatives.  He  had 
wormed  from  her  all  the  sordid  details  of  that  miserable 
family.  Why  should  she  give  her  money  to  a  drunkard 
who  had  no  claim  on  her  ?  He  knew  a  nice  respectable 
place  where  she  could  get  a  room  for  half  her  wages. 
She  could  buy  some  nice  clothes  with  her  savings.  He 
made  quite  a  pretty  speech  about  how  much  better  she 
would  look  in  a  fine  dress.  It  was  his  firm  conviction 
that  she  was  the  most  beautiful  girl  in  New  York. 


HARRY  KLEIN  57 

Yetta  knew  that  it  was  foolish  for  her  to  go  on  living 
with  the  Goldsteins.  As  Rachel  had  said,  they  were 
and  always  had  been  cheating  her.  But  a  dread  of 
the  unknown  kept  her  from  at  once  accepting  Harry's 
advice.  The  waves  of  Life  were  swirling  about  her 
dizzyingly,  and  she  felt  the  need  of  a  familiar  haven. 
She  held  on  in  panic  to  the  only  home  she  knew, 
sparring  blindly  for  time,  and  hoping  that  something 
would  happen  to  convince  her  definitely  whether  or 
not  she  ought  to  put  trust  in  the  alluring  dream. 

But  all  the  time  her  instinctive  resistance  was  weak 
ening  ;  she  had  begun  to  give  into  his  seduction.  Her 
growing  horror  of  the  " sweated"  monotony  of  her  life 
was  forcing  her  relentlessly  into  the  clutches  of  this 
pander.  Strain  her  eyes  as  she  might  she  could  see  no 
door  of  escape  unless  some  such  lover  rescued  her. 
Whenever  she  tried  to  think  of  the  possible  dangers  of 
believing  in  Harry  Klein,  a  mocking  imp  jeered  at  her 
with  the  grim  certainties  of  life  without  him.  What 
risk  was  there  in  the  dream  which  was  worse  than  the 
inevitable  barrenness  and  premature  fading  of  the 
sweat-shop?  She  listened  eagerly  to  what  he  said 
about  the  flat  they  would  rent  in  Harlem.  But  with 
more  thrilling  attention,  she  listened  to  his  stories  of 
dances.  Her  heart  hungered  passionately  for  a  little 
gayety.  And  then  there  was  the  fear  that  at  some  dance 
he  might  meet  a  more  attractive  girl  and  leave  her. 

She  was  no  longer  handing  over  all  her  wages  to  her 
aunt.  Under  pretext  of  a  slack  season  she  was  hold 
ing  back  a  couple  of  dollars  a  week.  She  carried  these 
humble  savings  wrapped  in  a  handkerchief  inside  her 
blouse.  Every  time  she  felt  the  hard  lump  against 
her  body,  her  heart  gave  a  little  jump.  She  would 


58  COMRADE   YETTA 

have  some  money  to  buy  a  hat  and  some  white  shoes 
for  her  first  dance. 

Jake,  alias  Harry  Klein,  had  a  more  devious  psy 
chology.  When  "Blow  Away"  asked  him  one  night, 
in  the  Second  Avenue  "hang-out,"  how  things  were 
going  with  Ray's  cousin,  Jake's  lying  face  assumed  a 
faraway  contented  smile.  But  inwardly  he  was  raging 
over  Yetta's  stubbornness.  He  was  not  used  to  such 
long  chases.  When  he  had  first  seen  her,  his  money- 
loving  soul  had  revolted  at  so  shameful  a  waste  of  earn 
ing  capacity.  A  pretty  girl  like  that  working  in  a 
sweat-shop  !  He  had  followed  the  scent  without  much 
enthusiasm.  It  would  be  an  affair  of  a  couple  of  weeks. 
Most  pretty  girls  want  good  clothes  to  look  prettier. 
Most  of  them  lost  their  heads  if  a  well-dressed  man 
made  love  to  them.  The  grim,  hopeless  monotony  of 
poverty  made  most  of  them  hungry  for  a  larger  life. 
It  was  really  sickening  to  a  man  of  his  experience  to  see 
how  greedily  they  swallowed  his  story  of  the  silk  firm  on 
Broadway.  It  was  —  and  this  was  his  expression  for 
supreme  easiness  —  like  stealing  pennies  from  a  blind 
beggar. 

Yetta  by  her  stubborn  caution  had  won  a  sort  of 
respect  from  him.  His  pride  was  engaged.  His  face 
flushed  when  he  thought  of  her.  She  stirred  in  him 
something  more  than  vexation.  The  girl  "on  his 
string"  who  was  at  the  moment  enjoying  his  special 
favor  suddenly  seemed  stupid  and  insipid  to  him. 
In  his  distorted  way  he  rather  fell  in  love  with  Yetta. 
His  day-dreaming  moments  were  filled  with  passionate 
lurid  pictures  of  possessing  her.  Although  it  was  prov 
ing  a  long  chase,  he  knew  the  odds  and  was  sure  of 
the  outcome.  Sometimes  he  thought  almost  tenderly 


HARRY  KLEIN  59 

of  the  time  of  victory.  Sometimes  his  face  hardened, 
and  he  vowed  he  would  make  her  pay. 

The  pursuit  had  dragged  on  a  solid  month  when 
quite  by  chance  he  stumbled  on  an  argument  which 
won  his  case. 

He  began  to  worry  about  her  health.  She  ought  to 
get  out  of  the  sweat-shop.  It  would  kill  her.  He 
told  her  horrible  stories  about  how  women  went  to 
pieces  in  the  sweat-shops,  how  they  got  "bad  lungs," 
or  went  blind,  or  had  things  happen  to  them  inside. 
He  would,  the  very  next  day,  find  a  position  for  her  in  a 
store  or  some  place  that  would  not  be  so  hard  on  her. 
It  did  not  matter  if  the  wages  were  not  so  good;  it 
broke  his  heart  to  think  of  her  ruining  her  health.  As 
soon  as  they  took  him  into  the  firm  he  was  going  to 
marry  her.  He  did  not  want  his  wife  to  be  sick  or 
crippled. 

In  his  mind  was  a  dark  and  sinister  plan  to  entice 
Yetta  from  her  home  and  establish  her  in  nominal 
employment  with  some  complaisant  woman.  He  was 
really  a  very  stupid  young  man.  He  did  not  realize 
that  in  all  her  life  Yetta  had  never  had  any  one  worry 
about  her  health.  He  did  not  guess  how  his  solicitude, 
which  seemed  so  unselfish,  had  choked  her  throat  and 
filled  her  eyes  with  tears.  He  went  on  with  his  evil 
eloquence,  when  all  the  time  he  might  have  put  his 
arms  about  her  and  kissed  her,  and  carried  her  off 
wherever  he  wished. 

The  next  afternoon  in  the  sweat-shop,  the  pain 
smote  Yetta  in  the  back  once  more. 


CHAPTER  VI 


THIS  second  backache  did  not  cause  any  noticeable 
interruption  in  the  day's  routine.  Yetta  gritted  her 
teeth  and  kept  the  pace  —  if  anything,  increased  it. 
But  while  her  fingers  flew  back  and  forth  over  the 
accustomed  work,  her  thoughts  soared  far  afield.  If 
there  had  been  persuasiveness  in  Harry's  words,  there 
was  ten  times  as  much  eloquence  in  that  sudden  clutch 
of  pain.  As  Mrs.  Cohen  had  prophesied,  it  had  come 
back.  How  soon  would  she  feel  it  again  ? 

At  last  the  motor  stopped  its  crazy  rattle,  the  roar 
of  the  belts  turned  to  a  sob,  the  day's  work  was  done. 
Yetta  arranged  her  shawl  with  trembling  fingers  and 
hurried  down  the  stairs.  But  she  hesitated  a  moment 
inside  the  doorway  before  plunging  out  into  the  pack  of 
workers  who  were  hurrying  eastward. 

The  ebb  and  flow  of  this  tide  of  tenement  dwellers  is 
one  of  the  momentous  sights  of  Manhattan.  At  five 
in  the  morning  the  cross-town  streets  are  almost  de 
serted.  On  the  Bowery  the  milk  wagons  and  occasional 
trucks  rattle  northward  in  the  false  dawn.  The  inter 
vals  between  the  elevated  trains  are  long.  But  the 
side  streets  are  even  more  lifeless.  Now  and  then 
shadows  flit  eastward  —  women,  night  workers,  who 

60 


THE  PIT'S   EDGE  61 

scrub  out  the  great  Broadway  office  buildings.  They 
would  be  shadows  even  in  broad  daylight.  Towards 
six  one  begins  to  hear  sharper,  hurrying  footfalls  — 
coming  westward.  The  tide  has  begun  to  flow.  It 
grows  in  volume  with  the  increasing  light.  The  con 
gested  tenements  have  awakened ;  by  six  the  flood  is  at 
its  height.  So  dense  is  the  rush  that  it  is  hard  to  make 
way  against  it,  eastward.  So  fast  the  flow  that  the 
observer  can  scarcely  note  the  faces.  It  is  the  backs 
which  catch  the  eye  and  leave  an  impress  on  the  memory. 
A  man  who  walked  like  a  soldier  —  upright  —  in  that 
crowd  would  seem  a  monstrosity.  Even  the  backs  of 
the  little  children  are  bent.  They  seem  to  be  carrying 
portly  persons  on  their  shoulders. 

Then  for  close  to  twelve  hours  these  side  streets  are 
almost  deserted  again  —  till  the  ebb  begins.  It  is 
hard  to  decide  which  sight  is  the  more  awesome :  the 
flow  of  humanity  hurrying  to  its  inhuman  labor  or  the 
same  crowd  ebbing,  hurrying  to  their  inhuman,  bestial 
homes. 

But  Yetta  was  not  thinking  of  her  fellow- workers. 
With  the  egoism  of  youth  she  was  thinking  of  herself 
and  the  pain  in  her  back.  Harry  had  been  right  —  the 
sweat-shop  was  killing  her.  There  was  a  chance 
of  escape  and  Life  might  never  offer  her  another. 
She  had  come  to  the  now-or-never  place.  Yetta  was 
not  a  coward,  she  was  only  timid.  And  the  bravery  of 
timid  people  is  sublime.  For  only  a  moment  she  hesi 
tated  in  the  dark  hallway,  below  Goldfogle's  Vest 
Company,  and  then  with  a  smile  —  a  fearless  smile  — • 
on  her  lips  she  stepped  out  into  the  glare  of  the  arc-light. 
Harry  was  waiting  fdr  her.  She  slipped  her  hand  con 
fidently  into  his  arm. 


62  COMRADE  YETTA 


"Say,  Harry,  to-morrow  night,  let's  go  to  a  ball." 

"What  ?"  he  said,  stopping  short,  to  the  surprise  and 
discomfort  of  the  home-rushing  workers.  "  What  ?" 

"Sure.     I  want  some  fun." 

At  last  she  had  swallowed  the  bait !  He  could  hardly 
believe  his  ears.  But  he  was  afraid  to  seem  too  eager. 
They  were  swept  along  by  the  hurrying  crowd  almost 
a  block  before  he  spoke. 

"How  about  clothes?" 

"I  got  some,"  she  said.  "I'll  bring  'em  to  the  shop 
and  put  'em  on  there." 

"Why  not  to-night." 

"No.     To-morrow." 

They  hurriedly  talked  over  the  details  of  her  escape. 
She  would  tell  her  aunt  the  "rush- work  story."  When 
the  shop  closed,  Harry  could  take  her  somewhere  to 
supper  and  afterwards  to  a  dance. 

"To-morrow  night  ?  Sure  ? "  he  said  when  they  sep 
arated  at  her  corner. 

"Sure,"  she  called  back. 

She  ran  upstairs  and  told  her  aunt  that  there  was  a 
rush  order  in  her  shop  and  she  must  hurry  back;  she 
only  had  time  for  a  glass  of  tea  and  a  piece  of  bread. 
To-morrow  she  would  take  a  bigger  lunch  and  not  come 
home  for  supper.  In  a  few  minutes  she  out  was  again  on 
the  brightly  lit  streets.  From  her  scant  store  of  savings 
she  bought  a  hat,  a  blouse,  a  pair  of  stockings  and 
white  shoes.  She  left  her  bundles  at  a  store  near  her 
home,  and  then  started  on  a  pilgrimage. 

The  shrine  she  set  out  to  visit  was  the  little  second 
hand  book-store  on  East  Broadway,  where  she  had  been 
so  happy  with  her  father.  It  had  hardly  changed  at  all. 
Only  the  man  who  sat  on  the  high  stool  behind  the  desk 


THE  PIT'S   EDGE  63 

did  not  look  like  her  father.  She  stood  there  aimlessly 
for  a  few  minutes,  and  then  her  eye  fell  on  the  first 
two  volumes  of  Les  Miser ables.  It  was  the  set  she  had 
read  to  her  father.  The  last  volume  was  in  her  room. 

"One  volume  is  gone/7  the  man  told  her;  "you  can 
have  them  for  seventy-five  cents." 

"I  ain't  got  more'n  half  a  dollar,"  she  said. 

"The  complete  set  is  worth  five  dollars." 

"I  only  got  fifty  cents." 

"All  right.     Take  them." 

She  turned  away  from  him  to  pull  the  last  of  her  little 
horde  out  of  her  blouse.  When  she  faced  him,  there 
were  tears  in  her  eyes. 

"What's  the  matter?"  he  asked  kindly. 

"NothhV.  My  father  used  to  keep  this  store. 
These  were  the  last  books  I  read  to  him." 

"Oh!  Is  your  name  Ray ef sky?  I  knew  your 
father  —  he  was  a  good  man.  And  I  guess  I  used  to 
know  you,  when  you  were  about  so  high.  Let's  see  — 
what  was  your  name  ?" 

"Yetta." 

"Oh,  yes,  little  Yetta  Ray  ef  sky,  grown  up  into  a  big 
woman.  I  suppose  you'll  be  getting  married  soon." 

"Say,  can  I  sit  down  here  fer  a  while,"  she  asked, 
to  change  the  subject. 

"Of  course  you  can,"  he  said  cordially,  bringing 
her  a  chair. 

She  pulled  it  back  into  the  obscurity  and  sat  there 
all  the  'evening,  watching  through  wet  eyes  the  old 
familiar  scene,  the  people  who  came  to  buy,  and  the 
people  who  came  to  talk.  One  or  two  she  recognized. 
When  she  had  been  a  little  girl,  she  used  to  sit  up  there 
behind  the  desk  on  a  high  stool  beside  her  father  and 


64  COMRADE  YETTA 

fall  asleep  against  his  shoulder.  There  was  no  one  now 
to  lean  her  head  against  when  she  was  tired  —  except 
Harry.  He  promised  to  take  care  of  her. 

Memories  of  her  father  seemed  to  crowd  the  dingy 
old  store.  Why  were  there  not  more  men  like  him  in 
the  world?  He  would  not  have  wanted  her  to  kill 
herself  over  the  machine.  How  glad  he  would  have 
been  that  she  had  found  a  lover  to  rescue  her.  She 
recalled  the  sermon  he  had  preached  about  the  wedding 
across  the  way.  She  did  not  remember  many  of  the 
words ;  much  of  it  had  been  above  her  childish  under 
standing.  But  she  remembered  how  he  had  told  her 
that  she  must  love  and  trust  and  cherish  her  man. 
She  recalled  the  Vow  of  Ruth  which  he  had  taught  her. 
And  now  at  last  the  lover  had  come.  The  old  sad, 
drab  life  had  ended ;  she  was  about  to  enter  into  the 
glory.  When  it  was  time  to  close,  the  bookseller  in 
sisted  on  giving  back  her  fifty  cents. 

"You  take  the  books/'  he  said.  "And  when  you  get 
married,  you  can  call  them  a  wedding  present  from  a 
man  who  knew  your  father,  and  never  knew  a  better 


man." 


Hugging  the  two  volumes  of  Les  Miserables  against 
her  breast,  she  walked  home  more  light  hearted  be 
cause  of  this  evening  with  ghosts  —  more  light  hearted 
than  she  had  ever  been  before. 

The  next  morning  Yetta  left  home  earlier  than  usual, 
so  that  she  could  pick  up  her  bundles  on  her  way  to 
work.  All  the  long  morning  the  noisy  machinery  of  the 
shop  seemed  to  be  playing  the  music  of  The  Song  of 
Songs. 

But  suddenly  The  Fates  seemed  to  become  ashamed 
of  the  way  they  were  treating  her.  Perhaps  Yetta's 


THE  PIT'S  EDGE  65 

dreams  of  her  father  the  night  before  had  pierced 
through  the  adamantine  walls  and  stirred  him  out  of 
the  drowsy  bliss  of  Paradise ;  he  may  have  thrown  him 
self  at  the  feet  of  The  Most  High  to  plead  his  daughter's 
cause.  Perhaps  it  was  her  Guardian  Angel  which  in 
tervened.  Or  perhaps  it  was  just  chance. 

When  Yetta  went  down  on  the  sidewalk  during  the 
noon  rest  to  get  a  breath  of  air,  —  with  the  Song 
ringing  in  her  heart,  —  her  attention  was  attracted  by 
a  group  of  people  about  a  woman  who  was  speaking. 
She  joined  the  listening  crowd.  The  woman  was  talk 
ing  about  a  strike  of  "The  Skirt  Finishers."  The  girls 
had  been  out  now  for  weeks  and  were  on  the  point 
of  starvation.  The  Woman's  Trade  Union  League, 
to  which  the  speaker  belonged,  had  arranged  a  ball  for 
that  night  in  behalf  of  the  " skirt  finishers." 

" Every  garment  worker  ought  to  come,"  she  said. 
"It's  your  fight  they  are  fighting.  The  garment  trades 
are  all  '  sweated '  —  you've  got  to  rise  or  die  together. 
And  every  cent  from  the  tickets  goes  to  help  the  strike. 
The  hall,  the  orchestra,  everything  has  been  donated 
—  all  the  money  goes  to  the  girls.  But,  more  than  the 
money,  they  need  encouragement.  Don't  buy  a  ticket 
and  throw  it  away.  Of  course  the  fifty  cents  will  help, 
but  we  want  more  than  the  money,  we  want  a  crowd. 
It  will  cheer  up  the  girls  a  bit  if  the  ball  is  a  success. 
If  you  can't  come  yourself,  give  a  ticket  to  some  one  who 
will." 

Now  the  spirit  of  her  father,  or  her  Guardian  Angel, 
or  chance,  moved  Yetta  to  give  her  last  fifty  cents  to 
the  cause  of  the  strikers.  The  time  was  so  close  when 
she  was  to  leave  the  sweat-shop  forever  that  her 
heart  went  out  to  all  the  less  fortunate  girls  who  had 


66  COMRADE  YETTA 

no  such  happy  prospects.  She  would  not  only  buy 
the  ticket,  but  if  the  strikers  needed  encouragement, 
she  would  persuade  Harry  to  take  her  there. 

When  the  day's  work  was  over,  she  hurried  into  her 
new  finery  and  downstairs  to  meet  her  lover.  Harry 
looked  her  over  approvingly.  Yes,  she  was  worth  all 
the  time  it  had  taken.  But  he  was  too  wily  a  fox  to 
let  his  evil  glee  be  apparent.  The  rest  was  so  easy ; 
only  a  fool  would  risk  frightening  her  now.  A  couple 
of  hours  more  love-making,  the  intoxication  of  a  few 
dances,  a  little  wine  —  if  need  be  a  drop  or  two  of 
chloral  —  and  the  trick  was  turned. 

He  took  her  to  "Lorber's"  for  supper.  And  leaning 
over  the  brightly  lighted  table,  over  dishes  which  all 
together  cost  less  than  a  dollar,  but  which  seemed  to 
her  very  wonderful,  he  solemnly  asked  her  to  promise 
to  marry  him.  Just  as  solemnly  she  said  "yes." 
Jove's  laughter  did  not  reach  her  ears  to  disturb  her  as 
she  looked  trustful  and  happy  into  his  eyes.  One 
cannot  but  wish  that  sometimes  the  guffaws  of  Jupiter 
were  louder. 

Harry  promised  to  go  to  a  jeweller  in  the  morning 
and  buy  her  an  engagement  ring.  And  when  they 
had  finished  talking  over  this  important  detail,  Yetta 
remembered  about  her  ticket  to  the  Woman's  Trade 
Union  League  ball.  Harry  tried  to  laugh  the  idea  away. 
He  knew  nothing  about  trade-unions  except  that  high- 
class  " crooks"  did  not  belong  to  them.  But  the 
Lyceum  Hall,  where  it  was  to  be  held,  was  a  very  mod 
est  place. 

"It's  sure  to  be  stupid  in  that  hall,"  he  said.  "They 
never  have  good  balls  there.  I'm  going  to  take  you  up 
to  The  Palace.  There's  a  swell  affair  there  every  night 


THE  PIT'S   EDGE  67 

—  the  real  thing.  And  fifty  cents  !  What  fun  can 
you  have  at  a  fifty-cent  ball?  Sometimes  the  tickets 
cost  five  dollars  at  The  Palace." 

But  Yetta  had  set  her  heart  on  using  her  own  ticket, 
and  it  seemed  an  unimportant  detail  to  Harry.  They 
compromised ;  they  would  go  to  both,  first  to  hers  and 
then  to  his.  She  would  see  that  he  knew  what  he  was 
talking  about. 

He  proposed  a  bottle  of  champagne.  For  a  moment 
Yetta  was  frightened. 

"I  never  drank  no  wine,"  she  protested. 

"Oh,  come,"  he  said,  "they  always  drink  wine  over  a 
marriage  contract.  I  wouldn't  ask  you  to  if  it  would 
hurt  you." 

Yetta  looked  at  him  out  of  her  big,  deep  eyes.  He 
had  the  peculiar  kind  of  nerve  which  made  it  possible 
for  him  to  look  straight  into  them.  He  reached  his 
hand  across  the  table  and  put  it  caressingly  on  hers. 
And  so  she  believed  him. 

"If  you  says  fer  me  to,"  she  said,  "I'll  do  anything 
you  wants  me  to,  Harry  —  always."  And  then  Yetta 
remembered  her  father  and  the  vow  he  had  taught 
her.  It  made  her  suddenly  bold.  She  took  firm  hold 
of  the  hand  Harry  had  reached  to  her  across  the 
table,  and  in  a  singsong  but  throbbing  voice  began  to 
recite  the  wonderful  old  Hebrew  words.  The  pimp 
was  bewildered.  His  religious  instruction  had  been 
neglected ;  he  knew  no  Hebrew. 

"Wot's  this  yer  giving  me?"  he  asked. 

And  Yetta  translated  into  the  vernacular. 

"It  means:  '  Wherever  you  go,  I'll  go  too,  where  you 
sleep,  I'll  sleep  wid  you,  your  folks  will  be  my  folks 
and  I'll  pray  to  your  God ;  when  you  die,  I'll  die  too  and 


68  COMRADE  YETTA 

be  buried  beside  you.  And  God  can  do  more  to  me, 
if  I  leave  you  before  I  die.'  My  father  taught  it  to  me. 
Ain't  it  a  swell  thing  to  say  when  you're  engaged  ?  " 

When  at  last  the  significance  of  Yetta's  avowal  had 
penetrated  Harry's  thick  skull,  he  moved  uneasily  on 
his  chair.  The  business  side  of  him  said  he  was 
wasting  time.  It  had  been  a  foolish  precaution  to 
bring  her  to  this  respectable  restaurant.  He  might 
have  taken  her  straight  to  the  Second  Avenue  "  hang 
out"  —  with  its  complaisant  proprietor  and  the  rooms 
upstairs.  But  there  was  a  sweetness  —  even  to  him 
—  in  such  innocent,  confiding  love.  He  had  acted 
the  part  with  her  so  long  that  it  seemed  something 
more  than  bald  pretence.  There  was  a  residue  of 
" original  decency"  left  under  the  hard  shell,  which 
living  in  this  world  of  ours  had  given  him.  And  this 
part  of  him  —  God  knows  it  was  small  and  weak  — 
wished  that  it  was  true.  It  was  strong  enough  to  make 
him  prolong  the  make-believe.  He  ordered  only  a  half 
bottle  of  champagne  —  as  a  really,  truly  lover  would 
have  done.  It  was  nine  o'clock  when  they  left. 

They  walked  along  Grand  Street  towards  the  Bowery. 
A  sudden  wave  of  tenderness  flooded  Harry. 

"Yetta, "  he  said,  "you've  never  kissed  me." 

Her  feet  on  the  roseate  clouds,  she  was  quite  uncon 
scious  of  the  passers-by ;  she  turned  her  face  up  to  him 
unquestioningly.  But  Harry  never  lost  consciousness 
of  such  things.  He  did  not  dare  to  risk  the  jibes  of 
onlookers.  He  tightened  his  grip  on  her  arm  and  led 
her  into  a  dark  doorway.  The  late  March  wind  was 
cold,  and  no  loiterers  sat  on  the  steps  nor  stood  about 
in  the  hall.  Yetta  —  a  bit  surprised  at  his  prudence  — 
gave  herself  freely  into  his  arms.  When  he  kissed  her, 


THE  PIT'S  EDGE  69 

the  last  faint  shadow  of  a  doubt  disappeared.  She 
was  sure  he  really  loved  her.  The  blood  pounding  in 
her  head  under  his  caresses  dizzied  her  —  but  she  was 
not  afraid,  Only  somehow,  the  flush  in  his  face  and 
the  husky  tone  of  his  voice  seemed  unfamiliar. 

"  Yetta, "  he  said  in  a  hot  whisper.  "Did  you  mean 
what  you  said  —  that  stuff  your  father  taught  you  ? 
Will  you  come  with  me  to-night  —  to  my  room  and  — 
never  go  away?" 

This  was  a  new  idea  to  Yetta ;  she  had  not  thought 
out  the  literal  meaning  of  the  ancient  vow.  For  a 
moment  she  looked  into  his  face,  then  turned  her  head 
aside.  After  all,  that  was  what  her  father  had  told 
her  to  do. 

"I'll  marry  you,"  he  said,  "as  soon  as  they  take  me 
into  the  firm.  It  won't  be  long." 

But  this  aspect  of  it  had  not  worried  Yetta.  She  did 
not  question  his  good  intentions.  She  was  trying  to 
picture  to  herself  what  such  a  change  in  her  life  would 
mean.  There  had  been  so  little  joy  for  her  that  now  it 
was  hard  to  accept  it. 

Suddenly  a  familiar  figure  crossed  her  range  of  vision. 
Her  eyes,  which  had  been  straining  to  pierce  the  future, 
focussed  on  the  other  side  of  the  street. 

"Look  !  look  !  Harry,"  she  cried.  "There's  Rachel. 
Run  and  call  her.  Quick." 

"No, "  he  said  firmly.     "That  ain't  Ray." 

"Yes,  it  is,"  Yetta  insisted.  "I  guess  I  knows  my 
cousin  when  I  sees  her.  Run  after  her.  I'd  like  to  tell 
her." 

But  Harry's  hand,  which  before  had  caressed  her, 
tightened  over  her  arm  in  a  brutal  grip.  He  jerked 
her  along  in  the  other  direction  to  the  Bowery. 


70  COMRADE  YETTA 

"I  tell  you  it  ain't  her.  Come  on.  Get  into  this 
car." 

The  evil  look  in  his  eyes  terrified  her.  The  sound  of 
his  voice  hurt  even  more  than  his  cruel  grip.  She  got 
into  the  car  without  a  word.  But  she  knew  he  had 
lied.  She  realized  suddenly  and  with  terror  that  she 
did  not  know  the  man  beside  her.  She  had  caught  a 
lightning  gleam  on  a  new  side  of  his  character.  She 
had  seen  something  dark  and  sinister.  And  all  the  joy 
which  had  been  in  her  heart  shrivelled  up  and  cowered. 

For  a  moment  they  sat  side  by  side  in  startled  si 
lence.  Harry  was  surprised  and  angry  with  himself 
for  having  lost  his  temper.  He  tried  to  cover  his 
blunder,  to  get  back  to  the  old  intimacy.  But  Yetta 
heard  the  forced  note  in  his  suave  voice.  The  sight  of 
Rachel  had  recalled  her  warnings  about  the  dangers 
which  life  holds  for  unprotected  girls.  She  did  not 
answer  him  nor  speak  till  the  car  passed  Fifth  Street. 

"The  Lyceum's  on  Sixth  Street." 

And  when  they  reached  the  sidewalk,  she  asked  him 
flatly  why  he  had  lied. 

" Can't  you  understand,  Yetta,"  he  asked,  bending 
his  head  close  to  hers,  "that  I  didn't  want  anybody 
butting  in  to-night  ?" 

But  she  was  not  reassured.  Once  a  doubt  had  en 
tered,  the  whole  fabric  of  her  dreams  had  begun  to 
totter.  And  while  he  told  her  over  again  the  thread 
bare  story  of  his  glowing  prospects,  she  was  remember 
ing  that  she  had  never  seen  the  "Silk-house"  on  Broad 
way.  When  he  spoke  of  how  happy  they  would  be, 
she  felt  the  sting  of  his  rough  grip  on  her  arm.  She 
was  a  very  frightened  young  person  as  they  reached 
the  door  of  the  Lyceum  Hall. 


THE   PIT'S   EDGE  71 

Harry  felt  the  change  in  her  and  was  raging.  All 
the  quasi-tenderness  he  had  felt  for  her  earlier  in  the 
evening  had  gone.  He  wanted  to  break  her.  He 
cursed  himself  for  the  time  he  had  wasted  that  evening. 
She  would  have  gone  anywhere  with  him  a  half  hour 
before.  His  distorted  brain  was  torn  by  strange 
emotions.  Yetta  had  caught  hold  of  the  inner  fabric  of 
his  imagination  as  no  other  girl  had  ever  done.  And, 
as  is  just  as  true  of  cadets  as  of  other  men,  when  they 
begin  to  care,  they  lose  their  sang-froid.  He  was 
suddenly  afraid  of  losing  her.  He  felt  himself  awk 
ward. 

His  lack  of  ease  was  intensified  by  his  strange  sur 
roundings.  He  had  never  been  to  a  ball  like  this. 
He  only  knew  two  kinds:  the  flashy,  vicious  dances, 
organized  by  his  own  class,  the  kind  he  was  planning  to 
take  Yetta  to,  and  " Greenhorn  balls"  —  sordid  but 
equally  vicious  —  in  the  back  rooms  of  low-class 
saloons,  patronized  by  ignorant,  newly  arrived  im 
migrants. 

The  entry  to  the  Lyceum  Hall  was  packed  with 
poorly  dressed  people,  but  they  were  not  greenhorns. 
The  women  were  the  strangest  of  all  to  him.  Their 
kind  did  not  come  to  the  balls  he  frequented.  More 
than  half  of  them  wore  shawls ;  they  were  of  all  ages, 
from  fifteen  to  seventy.  They  were  serious-eyed 
working  women,  and  many  of  them  looked  hungry. 
He  felt  that  his  foppish  clothes  were  conspicuous.  He 
felt  hostility  in  the  stares  of  the  men.  He  would  have 
given  anything  to  be  among  his  own  kind,  on  familiar 
ground. 

Indeed  he  was  conspicuous  among  that  roomful  of 
poorly  dressed  men.  He  attracted  the  attention  of  a 


72  COMRADE  YETTA 

couple  who  stood  near  the  door,  Mabel  Train  and 
Walter  Longman.  In  a  way  they  were  as  conspicuous 
as  he,  but  the  curious  glances  which  turned  in  their 
direction  were  not  hostile.  Miss  Train  was  secretary 
of  the  Woman's  Trade  Union  League.  Many  of  the 
women  and  girls,  as  they  entered  the  room,  rushed  up 
to  greet  her.  She  was  about  twenty-seven,  tall  and 
slender.  In  reality  her  body  was  an  almost  perfect 
instrument.  She  was  never  sick,  and  rarely  unpleas 
antly  tired,  but  in  looking  at  her  one  was  more  im 
pressed  with  nervous  than  physical  energy.  She  was 
more  graceful  than  beautiful.  Her  face  was  too  small, 
a  fault  which  was  emphasized  by  her  great  mass  of 
brown  hair.  But  her  diminutive  mouth  was  strong  in 
line.  Her  eyes  were  keenly  alive  and  unafraid. 

Longman  was  over  thirty,  big  of  bone  and  limb. 
Although  he  strongly  resembled  a  tame  bear,  he  was  a 
likable-looking  man.  And  just  as  it  surprised  people 
to  find  that  Miss  Train  was  a  hardy  horsewoman,  and 
could  tire  most  men  at  skiing  or  swimming,  so  every 
one  wanted  to  laugh  when  they  were  told  that  this 
lumbering  giant,  Longman,  was  an  Instructor  of 
Assyriology  at  Columbia. 

"Look,"  she  said  as  her  eyes  fell  on  Harry  and  Yetta, 
"he's  a  cadet." 

The  remark,  and  the  matter  of  fact,  decisive  way  she 
said  it,  was  typical  of  Mabel  Train.  She  knew  the 
life  of  the  East  Side  well  enough  to  recognize  Harry's 
unsavory  profession  at  a  glance,  and  she  did  not  waste 
time  beating  about  the  bush  of  euphemisms.  She 
never  declared  a  heart  or  a  club  when  she  meant  a 
spade. 

Longman's  eyebrows  went  up  affirmatively,  but  he  at 


THE  PIT'S   EDGE  73 

once  opposed  the  natural  deduction  from  her  observa 
tion. 

"Now,  don't  you  go  butting  in,  Mabel,  until  you're 
asked." 

She  shrugged  her  shoulders. 

"The  girl's  a  stranger.  I  guess  I've  got  a  right  to 
welcome  her." 

And  with  Longman  lumbering  behind  her  she  crossed 
the  hall. 

"Good  evening,"  she  said  to  Yetta,  elaborately 
ignoring  Harry's  existence.  "I'm  Miss  Train,  secre 
tary  of  the  League.  What's  your  trade?" 

But  Yetta  replied  with  a  question. 

"Didn't  you  talk  to  the  girls  at  the  Neighborhood 
House?" 

"Yes.  I  gave  them  a  talk  on  Trade  Unions.  Were 
you  there?  I  don't  remember  your  face." 

Yetta  started  to  explain  how  she  had  watched  the 
meeting  from  her  window.  But  suddenly  she  began 
to  stutter;  she  saw  Miss  Train  look  at  Harry,  saw  the 
scorn  and  contempt  in  her  eyes.  Yetta  could  not 
remember  what  she  was  trying  to  say.  Some  new 
comers  rushed  up  and  interrupted  them.  Mabel 
Train  felt  that  the  short  conversation  had  been  a  de 
cided  failure. 

But  to  Yetta  it  had  had  immense  significance.  In 
the  preceding  months  the  Settlement  had  come  to  typ 
ify  all  the  good  things  of  life,  for  which  she  hungered. 
Like  her  cousin  Rachel  she  "wanted  to  be  good."  The 
women  whom  she  watched  in  the  house  across  the 
street  had  seemed  to  her  good,  and  also  they  seemed 
happy.  Miss  Train  was  of  that  world,  she  bore  its 
stamp.  And  she  did  not  trust  Harry.  Down  crashed 


74  COMRADE  YETTA 

the  dream  into  greater  ruin.  Yetta  was  afraid  with 
Harry.  Beside  such  women  she  would  be  safe.  How 
could  she  escape? 

A  man  on  the  platform  clapped  his  hands  for  atten 
tion  and  asked  the  people  to  take  seats  close  to  the  stage. 

" Aw  !  Come  on,"  Harry  said ;  "let's  beat  it.  This 
place  is  stupid." 

" No/'  Yetta  said  with  the  determination  of  fear; 
"I  want  to  stay." 


BOOK  II 

CHAPTER  VII 

THE  SKIRT-FINISHERS'  BALL 

HARRY  was  right.  It  was  a  stupid  ball.  It  was 
more  of  a  strike-meeting  than  a  dance.  To  most  of 
the  people  the  speeches  were  of  more  importance  than 
the  two-steps.  As  he  followed  Yetta,  grumblingly, 
up  towards  the  platform  he  realized  that  the  crowd  of 
workers,  packing  in  about  them,  cut  off  all  possibility 
of  escape.  He  had  not  set  out  that  evening  with  the 
intention  of  sitting  on  a  hard  bench  and  listening  to 
"a  lot  of  rag-chewing." 

"Is  this  what  you  call  fun?"  he  growled  at  Yetta. 

But  the  crowd  —  so  foreign  to  his  manner  of  life  — 
intimidated  him.  He  sank  into  surly  silence. 

The  first  speaker  was  a  nervous,  overstrained  Irish 
woman.  With  high-strung  Celtic  eloquence  she  told 
the  story  of  the  sweated.  Her  manner  was  almost 
lyrical,  as  if  she  were  chanting  a  new  "Song  of  the 
Shirt."  Most  of  the  garment  workers  in  the  audience 
were  Jews,  but  although  her  manner  of  appeal  was 
strange  to  them,  the  subject  matter  of  her  speech  was 
their  very  life,  and  they  were  deeply  moved. 

The  president  of  the  "Skirt-Finishers'  Union,"  who 

75 


76  COMRADE  YETTA 

spoke  in  Yiddish,  followed  her.  She  told  of  the  intoler 
able  conditions  of  the  trade :  how  the  prices  had  been 
shaved  until  no  one  but  girls  who  lived  at  home  and 
had  no  rent  to  pay  could  earn  a  living  at  it;  how  at 
last  the  strike  had  started  and  how  desperate  the  strug 
gle  was.  The  treasury  was  empty,  so  they  could  pay 
"benefits"  no  longer.  Unless  money  could  be  raised 
they  would  be  starved  back  to  the  machines  —  defeated. 

Then  a  young  Jewish  lawyer,  Isadore  Braun,  spoke. 
It  was  the  ringing  message  of  Socialism  he  gave  them. 
All  the  working  people  of  the  world  were  victims  of 
the  same  vicious  industrial  system.  In  one  branch  of 
industry  —  like  ' '  skirt-finishing, ' '  which  they  had 
just  heard  about  —  it  might  momentarily  be  worse. 
But  the  same  principle  was  back  of  all  labor.  The 
coal-miner,  the  lace-maker,  the  farm-laborer,  the 
clerk  —  every  one  who  worked  for  wages  —  was  in 
the  same  manner  being  cheated  out  of  some  of  the 
product  of  his  labor.  Individually  the  workingman 
is  powerless.  When  men  or  women  get  together  in  a 
union,  they  are  stronger  and  can  sometimes  win  im 
provements  in  the  conditions  of  their  trade.  But  if  they 
would  all  get  together  in  one  immense  organization, 
if  they  would  also  vote  together,  they  would  be  an 
overwhelming  force  in  politics.  They  would  rule 
society.  They  could  install  a  new  civilization  based 
on  Justice  and  Brotherhood. 

"Workingmen  of  all  countries,  unite  !  You  have 
nothing  to  lose  but  your  chains.  You  have  a  world  to 
gain!" 

Dr.  Liebovitz  rose  when  Braun  sat  down.  He  was  a 
smooth-shaven,  amiable-looking  man,  but  he  spoke  with 
a  bitterness  in  striking  contrast  to  his  appearance. 


THE  SKIRT-FINISHERS'  BALL  77 

"The  bosses  do  more  than  cheat  you.  They're  not 
only  thieves  —  they're  murderers !  I'm  a  doctor. 
Day  and  night  I  go  about  through  this  district  with  a 
bag  of  medicine  and  surgical  instruments  trying  to 
save  the  lives  of  people  —  men  and  women  and  new 
born  babies  —  who  would  never  be  sick  if  it  was  not 
for  the  crimes  of  capitalism ! 

"  Tuberculosis  !  How  many  of  you  are  there  in  this 
audience  who  haven't  lost  a  relative  from  lungs? 
As  I  sat  here  a  moment  ago  I  heard  at  least  a  dozen 
tubercular  coughs.  It's  preventable  —  it's  curable. 
There's  no  reason  why  any  one  should  have  it  —  less 
still  that  any  one  of  you  should  die  of  it  —  if  Capitalis 
tic  Greed  didn't  force  you  to  live  in  rotten  tenements, 
to  work  long  hours  in  worse  shops. 

"  Unless  you  people  who  are  here  this  evening  —  and 
all  the  working  people  —  make  up  your  mind  to  make 
it  impossible  for  some  people  to  get  fat  off  your  misery, 
unless  you  get  together  to  overthrow  Capitalism,  to 
establish  Socialism,  some  of  your  babies  are  going  to 
die  of  impure  milk,  others  of  adulterated  food,  more  of 
T.  B.  Unless  we  can  put  these  murderers  out  of  busi 
ness  there  will  never  be  an  end  to  this  horrible,  needless, 
inexcusable  slaughter." 

Miss  Train  spoke  when  he  had  finished.  She  made 
no  pretence  of  oratory,  did  not  seek  to  move  them  either 
to  tears  or  anger.  She  tried  to  utilize  the  emotions 
stirred  by  the  other  speakers,  for  the  immediate  object 
of  the  meeting  —  raising  funds  for  the  "  skirt-finishers." 
A  collection  would  now  be  taken  up.  Mr.  Casey,  the 
secretary  of  the  Central  Federated  Union,  had  prom 
ised  to  address  them.  He  had  not  yet  come.  She  hoped 
he  would  arrive  while  the  girls  were  passing  the  hat. 


78  COMRADE  YETTA 

"For  Gawd's  sake/'  Harry  said,  "come  on.  This  is 
fierce." 

"No,"  Yetta  replied,  jerked  down  from  the  heights 
by  his  gruff  voice.  "I  want  to  hear  it  all." 

She  had  listened  spellbound  to  the  speakers.  Never 
having  been  to  a  meeting,  she  had  never  heard  the  life 
of  the  working  class  discussed  before.  Almost  every 
thing  they  said  about  the  "skirt-finishers"  applied 
equally  to  her  own  trade.  Jake  Goldfogle  was  grinding 
up  women  at  his  machines  to  satisfy  his  greed.  Be 
fore,  he  had  seemed  to  her  an  unpleasant  necessity. 
Now  he  took  on  an  aspect  of  personal  villainy.  He  was 
not  only  harsh  and  foul-mouthed  and  brutal,  he  was 
robbing  them.  Cheated  at  home  by  her  relatives,  at 
the  shop  by  her  boss,  what  wonder  her  life  was  poverty 
stricken  ! 

A  strange  thing  was  happening  to  Yetta.  The 
champagne  which  Harry  had  urged  on  her  was  mounting 
to  her  brain.  She  had  not  taken  enough  to  befuddle 
her,  but  sufficient  —  in  that  hot,  close  hall  —  to  free 
her  from  her  natural  self -consciousness,  to  open  all 
her  senses  to  impressions,  to  render  her  susceptible  to 
"suggestion."  This,  although  Harry  did  not  under 
stand  psychology,  was  why  he  had  urged  it  on  her. 
But  his  plan  had  "gang  aglee."  The  alcohol  was  work 
ing,  not  amid  the  seductions  of  a  brightly  lighted,  gay 
ball-room,  but  in  this  sombre,  serious  assembly.  The 
"suggestions"  which  were  flowing  in  upon  her  receptive 
consciousness  were  not  the  caresses  of  a  waltz.  She 
was  being  hypnotized  by  the  pack  of  humanity  about 
her.  She  was  becoming  one  with  that  crowd  of  strug 
gling  toilers,  one  with  the  vast  multitude  of  workers 
outside  the  hall;  she  was  feeling  the  throb  of  a  broader 


THE  SKIRT-FINISHERS'  BALL  79 

Brotherhood,  in  a  way  she  never  could  have  felt  without 
the  stimulation  of  the  wine. 

One  of  the  speakers  had  alluded  to  the  evil  part 
in  the  sweating  system  which  is  played  by  the 
highly  paid  " speeders."  Yetta  was  a  "speeder." 
Why?  What  good  did  it  do  her?  Her  uncle  swal 
lowed  her  wages.  Jake  Goldfogle  —  the  slave-driver 

—  profited  most.     How  did  it  come  about  that  she  — 
her  father's  daughter  —  was  engaged  in  so  shameful  a 
role?     She  wanted  passionately  to  talk  it  over  with 
some  one  who  understood. 

Open-eyed  she  watched  the  group  of  speakers  on  the 
platform.  She  felt  the  kinship  between  their  idealism 
and  her  father's  dreams.  He  would  have  loved  and 
trusted  Miss  Train.  It  must  be  wonderful  to  be  a 
woman  like  that.  With  the  inspiration  of  the  wine  in 
her  veins,  she  felt  that  she  might  find  courage  to  talk 
to  her. 

The  young  woman  whom  Yetta  was  so  ardently 
admiring  was  holding  in  her  hand  a  note  from  Mr.  Casey 
which  announced  that  he  could  not  get  to  the  meeting, 
and  she  was  asking  Longman  —  ordering  him,  in  fact 

—  to  fill  the  gap  in  the  programme.     He  was  protesting. 
He  was  not  an  orator.     The  sight  of  a  crowd  always 
made  him  mad.     He  was  sure  to  say  something  which 
would  anger  them.     It  would  be  much  better  to  begin 
the  dance.     But  Miss  Train  was  used  to  having  her 
way.     His  protest  only  half  uttered,  Longman  found 
himself  out  on  the  platform. 

"Mr.  Casey  can't  come.  And  Miss  Train  has  asked 
me  to  take  his  place.  Now,  I'm  no  good  as  a  speaker, 
and  you  won't  like  what  I  say,  but  I'm  going  to  tell 
you  what  I  believe.  Braun  and  Dr.  Liebovitz  told  you 


80  COMRADE  YETTA 

about  the  rotten  injustice  of  our  social  system,  and  what 
they  said  was  true.  But  they  did  not  tell  you  whose 
fault  it  is.  You  may  think  the  bosses  are  to  blame. 
It's  your  own  fault.  You're  only  getting  what's 
coming  to  you. 

"  You're  slaves  because  you  haven't  the  nerve  to  be 
free.  You  came  here  to  hear  the  bosses  called  names. 
I  don't  like  the  bosses  any  more  than  you  do.  But 
it  makes  me  tired  to  hear  everybody  cursing  them  and 
not  looking  at  their  own  faults.  You  are  getting 
cheated.  What  are  you  going  to  do  about  it  ?  Are 
you  cowards  ?  Haven't  you  got  the  guts  to  stand  up 
and  fight  for  your  rights  ? 

"  Fourscore  and  several  years  ago,  our  Fathers  brought 
forth  on  this  continent  a  new  nation  dedicated  to  the 
ideals  of  Democracy,  of  Liberty,  Justice,  and  Brother 
hood.  And  look  at  this  nation  now  !  Plutocracy  has 
swallowed  up  Democracy.  I  don't  have  to  tell  you 
garment  workers  how  little  there  is  of  Justice  and 
Brotherhood.  What's  wrong  ?  Were  the  Fathers  off 
on  their  ideals  ?  No  !  But  they  neglected  to  people 
this  continent  with  a  race  of  men  !  The  country  is  full 
of  weak-kneed  cringers,  who  read  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  once  a  year,  but  would  rather  be  slaves 
than  go  hungry.  People  whose  rights  are  'for  sale.' 
People  who  prefer  '  getting  on  in  the  world  '  to  liberty. 
The  trouble  with  this  country  is  that  we've  got  too  few 
patriots. 

"I'm  an  American.  What  I've  been  saying  to  you 
Jews  applies  equally  to  my  own  people.  But  at  least  I 
can  say  this  for  myself.  It  isn't  much,  but  it's  more 
than  you  can  say.  My  ancestors  fought  for  Liberty. 
Back  in  1776  some  of  my  forebears  thought  enough  of 


THE  SKIRT-FINISHERS'  BALL  81 

independence  to  risk  not  only  their  jobs  —  but  their 
lives.  My  father  valued  human  freedom  enough  in 
the  sixties  to  fight  for  it. 

"Do  you  want  some  one  to  give  you  Liberty  ?  —  to 
hand  it  to  you  on  a  platter  ?  You  come  here,  hundreds 
of  thousands  every  year,  from  the  oppression  of  mediae 
val  Europe,  because  here  in  America  men  of  a  different 
race  and  creed  have  bought  some  measure  of  freedom 
with  their  blood.  Not  perfect  Liberty  —  far  from  it. 
But  we  had  to  fight  for  the  little  we  have. 

"  You're  disappointed  in  America.  You  curse  the 
bosses  who  enslave  you.  But  think  a  moment. 
Why  should  you  be  free?  There's  nothing  in  life 
worth  having,  which  doesn't  have  to  be  striven  for. 
One  of  the  American  Revolutionists  said,  '  Eternal 
vigilance  is  the  price  of  Liberty.'  Have  you  been  vigi 
lant  ? 

"  To-day  the  age-old  fight  for  Liberty  is  being  fought 
out  in  Industry  —  between  Capital  and  Labor.  What 
part  in  it  are  the  Jews  of  America  going  to  take  ?  Are 
you  going  to  submit  servilely  to  injustice,  in  the  vain 
hope  that  some  one  else  will  win  Justice  for  you  ?  Or 
are  you  going  to  follow  the  footsteps  of  the  glorious 
fighters  of  your  race,  like  Heine  and  Marx  ?  Are  you 
going  to  beg  for  Liberty  or  join  the  Army  of  Liberation, 
pay  your  share  of  the  price  and  have  the  proud  right 
to  claim  your  share  of  the  Victory  ? 

"I  know  your  history.  I  know  how  the  ages  of 
oppression  have  bent  your  backs.  I  know  your  poverty. 
But  did  you  come  to  America  to  transplant  here  these 
old  traditions  of  servitude  ?  No.  You  came  in  search 
of  a  broader  life,  a  larger  measure  of  Freedom.  Well. 
Just  like  every  one  else  you'll  have  to  fight  for  it. 


82  COMRADE  YETTA 

You've  got  to  sacrifice  for  it.  You've  got  to  be  ready 
to  die  for  it. 

"What  are  the  most  servile,  down-trodden,  abject 
trades  in  the  city?  The  sweated  garment  trades. 
Who  works  in  them  ?  Jews.  Where  are  the  rottenest, 
vilest  tenements?  On  the  East  Side.  Who  lives  in 
them  ?  Jews.  You  are  the  worst-paid,  hardest-driven, 
least-considered  people  in  New  York.  You  are  willing 
to  work  in  sweat-shops.  You  consent  to  live  in  dumb 
bell  tenements.  You  submit  to  injustice. 

"You  haven't  joined  the  fight,  although  the  Jew 
can  fight  when  he  wants  to.  I've  no  quarrel  with  these 
' skirt-finishers.'  But  the  fact  remains  that  —  with  a 
few  glorious  exceptions  —  the  great  mass  of  your  people 
have  preferred  a  new  serfdom  to  the  trouble  of  earning 
Liberty.  The  Chosen  People  are  watching  the  combat 
from  a  safe  distance. 

"This  may  sound  as  if  I  was  a  Jew-hater.  I'm  not. 
But  I  love  Liberty.  The  fight  is  world-wide,  inter 
national,  interracial.  It's  bigger  than  Jew  or  Gentile. 
It's  for  the  Freedom  of  Humanity.  And  the  people 
who  are  willing  to  be  slaves  are  more  dangerous  enemies 
than  those  who  want  to  be  tyrants.  It's  rather  good 
fun  fighting  oppressors.  But  it's  Hell  trying  to  free 
ourselves  from  slaves." 

His  words  inflamed  Yetta's  imagination.  How 
often  she  had  heard  her  father  explain  the  misery  of 
their  people  by  the  lack  of  training  in  the  habits  of 
freedom  !  He  had  felt  —  and  it  had  been  his  keenest 
sorrow  —  that  the  Chosen  People  were  falling  far  short  of 
their  high  calling.  She  remembered  his  solemn  talks  with 
her,  his  explanation  of  why  he  had  wished  her  to  study. 
He  wanted  her  to  be  an  American  —  a  free  woman. 


THE  SKIRT-FINISHERS'  BALL  83 

Longman  stopped.  Instead  of  applause  there  were 
angry  murmurings.  But  his  words  had  sounded  like 
the  Ultimate  Truth  to  Yetta.  Why  did  they  not  greet 
his  message  with  a  cheer.  The  wine  accomplished  its 
miracle.  Without  its  burning  stimulation  she  would 
have  been  a  cowering  bundle  of  timidity  before  that 
sullen  audience.  But  many  good  things  can  the  kindly 
Fates  conjure  out  of  vile  beginnings.  The  champagne 
which  was  to  have  been  her  utter  undoing  gave  her 
courage.  She  got  up  as  one  inspired. 

"What  he  says  is  true.  We  Jews  don't  fight  for 
Freedom  like  we  ought  to.  Look  at  me.  My  father 
loved  Liberty.  Perhaps  some  of  you  remember  him. 
His  name  was  Rayef sky.  He  used  to  keep  a  book-store 
on  East  Broadway.  He  talked  to  me  about  Liberty  — 
all  the  time,  and  how  we  in  this  country  ought  to  do 
our  share.  And  then  he  died,  and  I  went  to  work  in 
a  sweat-shop.  Vests.  I  forgot  all  he  had  told  me. 
What  right  have  I  got  to  be  free  ?  I  forgot  all  about 
it.  I  ain't  been  vigilant.  Nobody's  talked  to  me 
about  Liberty  —  since  my  father  died.  I'm" — her 
voice  trembled  a  moment  —  "Yes,  I'll  tell  you.  I'm 
speeder  in  my  shop.  I'm  sorry.  I  didn't  think  about 
it.  Nobody  ever  told  me  what  it  meant  before.  If 
there's  a  union  in  my  trade,  I'll  join  it.  I'll  try  not  to 
be  a  slave.  I  can't  fight  much.  I  don't  know  how.  I 
guess  that's  the  real  trouble  —  we're  not  afraid  —  only 
we  don't  know.  I  ain't  got  no  education.  I  had  to 
stop  school  when  my  father  died.  I  was  only  fifteen. 
But  I'll  try  not  to  make  it  harder  for  those  that  are 
fighting.  I  think  ..." 

But  her  excitement  had  burned  out  the  stimulation 
of  the  wine.  She  suddenly  saw  the  sea  of  faces.  It 


84  COMRADE  YETTA 

turned  her  from  The  Voice  of  her  Race  into  a  very 
frightened  young  woman,  who  knew  neither  how  to  go 
ahead  nor  how  to  sit  down. 

" That's  all  I've  got  to  say !"  she  stammered.  "I'll 
try  not  to  be  a  slave." 

Her  simple,  straightforward  story,  above  all  her 
self-accusation,  turned  the  spirit  of  the  assembly. 
"  That's  right/'  a  number  of  men  admitted,  and  there 
was  considerable  applause.  She  was  too  confused, 
too  frightened  at  her  own  daring,  to  realize  that  she  had 
saved  the  meeting  from  failure.  But  Miss  Train,  who 
never  lost  her  presence  of  mind,  recognized  the  Psycho 
logical  Moment  to  end  the  speech  making,  and  she 
signalled  to  the  orchestra  to  begin  the  dance  music. 
Every  one  got  up  and  began,  with  a  great  hubbub,  to 
move  the  benches  back  against  the  walls. 

But  Harry  Klein  was  in  no  mood  for  dancing.  In 
this  unfamiliar,  disturbing  atmosphere,  he  also  was 
discovering  that  his  companion  had  a  new  and  unsus 
pected  side.  It  was  something  he  did  not  understand, 
with  which  he  was  unprepared  to  deal.  Everything 
seemed  conspiring  to  tear  her  away  from  him.  There 
were  limits  even  to  his  patience.  He  must  get  her  out 
on  the  sidewalk  —  into  his  own  country. 

"Come  on,"  he  said  gruffly,  taking  firm  hold  of  her 
arm.  "I've  had  enough  of  this.  Come  on,  I  say. 
I  ain't  going  to  listen  to  hot  air  all  night." 

In  her  moment  of  exaltation,  Yetta  had  almost  forgot 
ten  the  existence  of  her  fiance.  His  brusque  manner 
broke  into  her  mood  with  a  suddenness  which  dazed 
her.  He  had  led  her  down  the  hall,  nearly  to  the  door, 
before  she  could  collect  her  wits.  Beyond  the  door  was 
the  dark  night  and  helplessness  and  unknown  fear. 


THE  SKIRT-FINISHERS'  BALL  85 

Here  in  the  hall  was  the  woman  who  had  been  in  the 
Settlement,  the  woman  of  whom  she  was  not  afraid. 

"Wait,"  she  said.     "I  want  to  talk  to  Miss  Train." 

In  all  that  hostile  environment,  Miss  Train's  silent 
disdain  had  been  the  most  outspoken.  Harry  would 
rather  have  had  Yetta  talk  with  Rachel.  Rachel  at 
least  was  afraid  of  him. 

"Come  on/'  he  growled,  and  jerked  her  nearer  to  the 
door. 

"No,  no.     I  want  to  stop." 

"Don't  you  begin  to  holler,"  he  hissed,  with  a  rough 
jerk.  He  tried  to  subdue  her  with  his  hard  eyes. 
"Come  on.  Don't  you  make  no  row.  Don't  you 
holler." 

They  were  close  to  the  dark  doorway  now,  and  some 
how  Yetta  could  not  find  breath  to  scream  out  her 
fright.  He  pushed  her  roughly  out  into  the  vestibule. 
!  But  his  progress  came  to  a  sudden  stop.  Some  one 
caught  him  by  the  collar  and  swung  him  off  his  feet. 

"Not  so  fast,  my  man."  It  was  Longman.  "Where 
are  you  trying  to  take  this  young  lady?" 

Harry's  free  hand  made  an  instinctive  movement  to 
wards  his  hip  pocket,  but  Longman's  hand  got  there  first. 

"Oh,  ho  !"  he  said  softly.     "Concealed  weapons  ?" 

Jake  nearly  wept  with  rage.  He  —  the  president  of 
a  political  club,  the  dreaded  leader  of  a  murderous 
gang  —  held  up  in  such  a  manner  for  the  mockery  of  a 
lot  of  working-men! 

"I  asked  you  where  you  were  taking  this  young 
lady,"  Longman  repeated. 

"I  brought  her  here,"  Jake  snarled,  trying  desperately 
to  regain  his  sangfroid.  "I  guess  I  can  take  her  away 
when  she's  tired  of  the  show." 


86  COMRADE  YETTA 

"  Yes.  Of  course  you  can  take  her  away,  if  she  wants 
to  go.  But  you  can't  if  she  doesn't.  I  didn't  catch 
your  name/'  he  continued,  turning  to  Yetta,  "but  I'c 
be  very  glad  to  see  you  safely  home,  whenever  you  want 
to  go.  Would  you  prefer  to  go  with  me  or  with  this  — ' 
he  looked  first  at  the  wilted  desperado  in  his  grip  anc 
then  at  the  little  circle  of  men  who  had  gathered  about 
"He's  a  Cadet,  isn't  he,  comrades?" 

There  was  a  growl  of  assent. 

"You  ain't  going  to  throw  me  down  now,  are  you 
Yetta,"  Jake  pleaded,  the  thought  of  losing  her  suddenly 
undoing  what  he  considered  his  manhood,  "just  be 
cause  this  gang  has  picked  on  me." 

"Of  course  you  can  go  with  him  if  you  want  to/' 
Longman  said  kindly.  "But  really  I  think  you'c 
better  not.  You  won't  do  much  for  Freedom  if  you 
go  with  him." 

"I'll  stay,"  Yetta  said  simply. 

And  then  Jake  began  to  curse  and  threaten. 

"Shut  up,"  Longman  said  laconically,  and  Jake 
obeyed. 

"Here,"  he  continued  to  some  of  the  men,  "hand 
him  over  to  the  police.  Be  careful ;  he's  got  a  gun  in 
his  pocket.  Make  a  charge  of  'concealed  weapons. 
And  —  what  is  your  name  ?  —  Rayefsky.  Thanks. 
Miss  Train  wanted  to  speak  to  you  —  that's  why  I 
happened  along  just  now.  Won't  you  come  and  we'll 
find  her." 

He  told  her  how  much  he  had  liked  her  speech,  as 
he  led  her  across  the  room  and  chatted  busily  about 
other  insignificant  things,  just  as  if  rescuing  a  young 
girl  from  the  brink  of  perdition  was  one  of  the  most 
natural  things  in  the  world.  Yetta  was  not  at  all 


THE  SKIRT-FINISHERS'  BALL  87 

hysterical,  but  she  had  had  enough  strange  emotions 
to  upset  any  one  that  night.  His  quiet  steady  tone,  as 
if  everything  of  course  was  all  right,  was  like  a  rock  to 
lean  upon. 

He  left  her  in  an  empty  committee-room  off  the  stage 
and  hurried  out  to  find  Mabel,  who,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  had  not  sent  him  to  find  Yetta.  With  no  small 
exertions  he  pried  her  loose  from  the  swarm  of  admiring 
young  girls,  and,  leading  her  to  the  door  of  the  com 
mittee-room,  told  her  what  had  happened. 

"Good  old  Walter,'7  she  laughed;  " warning  me  not 
to  butt  in,  and  doing  the  rescue  all  by  yourself." 

"I  didn't  butt  in,"  he  said  sheepishly,  "until  the 
chap  began  to  use  force." 

"Are  muscles  the  only  kind  of  force  you  recognize  ?" 
she  said.  "I'll  bet  he  wasn't  using  half  as  much  force 
when  you  interfered  as  he  had  other  times  without 
touching  her." 

She  went  into  the  committee-room  and  closed  the 
door.  And  in  a  very  few  minutes  Yetta  was  lost  in  the 
wonder  of  a  friend.  Hundreds  of  girls  had  sobbed  out 
their  troubles  on  Miss  Train's  shoulder  before,  but, 
although  she  made  jokes  to  her  friends  about  how  tears 
faded  her  shirtwaists,  none  of  the  girls  had  ever  failed 
to  find  a  ready  sympathy.  Although  the  process  had 
lost  the  charm  of  novelty  to  Mabel  it  was  for  Yetta  a 
new  and  entirely  wonderful  experience.  Not  since  her 
father  had  comforted  her  for  a  stubbed  toe  or  a  cut 
finger  had  she  cried  on  anybody's  shoulder.  And 
Miss  Train,  as  well  as  Longman,  had  the  tact,  as  soon 
as  possible,  to  lead  her  thoughts  away  from  the  even 
ing's  tragedy  to  the  new  ideals  which  the  meeting  had 
called  to  life.  As  soon  as  her  tears  were  dried,  Mabel 


88  COMRADE  YETTA 

took  her  out  in  the  main  hall  and  introduced  her  to  her 
friends.  Longman  came  up  and  claimed  a  dance,  and 
after  it  was  over  he  sat  beside  her  for  a  time  and  talked 
to  her  about  labor  unions  and  the  struggle  for  Liberty. 
And  then  he  called  over  Isadore  Braun,  the  socialist 
lawyer,  and  had  him  dance  with  her.  These  two  were 
her  only  partners  at  her  first  ball.  Every  few  minutes 
Mabel  managed  to  escape  from  her  manifold  duties  and 
sit  beside  her. 

About  midnight  they  took  her  home.  Longman 
shook  hands  with  her,  and  Mabel  kissed  her  good 
night.  Yetta  went  up  the  dark  stairway  very  tired 
and  shaken. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

NEW   FRIENDS 

"INTERESTING  girl,"  Longman  said  as  he  and  Miss 
Train  turned  away  from  Yetta's  door. 

"  Yes.  I'll  have  to  keep  an  eye  on  her.  She  may  be 
a  valuable  recruit." 

Longman  laughed. 

" What's  so  funny?"  she  asked  sharply. 

"  Funny  isn't  just  the  word,  but  don't  you  ever  see 
anything  in  people  except  enemies  and  allies?" 

"I  don't  think  much  else  matters  —  enemies  and 
allies.  There  can't  be  neutrals  in  a  fight  for  Justice." 

"True  enough,  but  I  see  a  lot  of  interesting  things 
in  this  little  girl  of  the  slums,  which  haven't  any 
thing  to  do  with  the  fact  that  she  is  chuck  full  of 
fighting  spirit  and  is  sure  to  be  on  the  right  side." 

"For  instance?" 

"Well.  To  begin  with,  a  sweet  and  pure  character, 
which  in  some  amazing  way  has  formed  itself  in  this 
rotten  environment  —  a  wonderfully  delicate  sort  of  a 
flower  blossoming  in  the  muck  heap.  The  kind  of  a 
sensitive  plant  that  the  slightest  rude  touch  would 
blight.  It's  a  marvel  how  it  has  escaped  being  trod 
upon  —  there  are  so  many  careless  feet !  I'm  not 
proud  of  myself  as  I  am,  but  I  hate  to  think  of  what  I'd 

89 


90  COMRADE  YETTA 

be  like  if  I'd  been  born  in  her  cradle.  It  is  always  a 
marvel  to  me  when  some  child  of  the  slum  wants  to  be 
good.  From  where  in  all  this  sordidness  did  she  get 
the  inspiration?  And  then  it  is  always  interesting  to 
me  —  sad  and  interesting  —  to  see  how  utterly  stupid 
this  desire  for  goodness  is  —  how  it  is  just  as  likely  to 
lead  to  utter  damnation  as  anywhere  else.  This 
Yetta  Rayefsky  has  a  beautiful  and  quite  absurd  trust 
in  people.  On  a  very  short  acquaintance  she  trusts 
you  completely.  I  think  she  trusts  me  too  —  just 
exactly  as  she  trusted  that  Cadet.  And  the  faith  she 
put  in  him  was  just  as  beautiful  as  what  she  has  given 
you." 

"  Walter,  a  person  who  looked  at  you  would  never 
dream  that  you're  such  a  — " 

"  Sentimentalist  ?  I  suppose  you're  going  to  call 
me  that  again." 

Longman  said  it  bitterly.  And  she,  knowing  how  the 
taunt  would  sting  him,  with  equal  bitterness  did  not 
reply.  They  trudged  on  side  by  side  in  silence,  across 
town  to  Broadway  and  up  that  deserted  thoroughfare 
towards  Washington  Square.  They  were  neither  of 
them  happy. 

In  the  bottom  of  her  heart  Mabel  Train  knew  that 
something  had  been  neglected  by  those  fairies  who  had 
equipped  her  for  life.  They  had  showered  very  many 
talents  upon  her.  But  they  had  forgotten  that  little 
knot  of  nerve  cells  which  had  to  do  with  the  deeper 
affections.  There  were  heights  and  depths  of  life  which 
she  knew  she  would  never  visit.  It  made  her  feel  un 
pleasantly  different.  And  Longman,  whom  otherwise 
she  liked  very  much,  was  always  reminding  her  of  this 
deficiency.  It  seemed  to  her  that  he  was  mocking  her 


NEW  FRIENDS  91 

cold  intellectualism.  And  being  supersensitive  on  this 
point,  she  had  hurled  "  sentimentalist "  in  his  face. 

Of  all  the  odd  types  in  New  York  City,  Walter  Long 
man  was  one  of  the  most  bizarre.  His  parents  had 
died  while  he  was  in  Harvard.  They  had  left  him  an 
income  of  about  five  thousand  a  year.  He  did  not 
make  a  brilliant  record  in  the  University.  There  were 
nearly  always  one  or  two  conditions  hanging  over  his 
head,  but  a  marked  talent  for  languages  and  a  vital 
interest  in  philosophy  carried  him  through.  He  was 
not  popular  with  the  students  because  in  spite  of  his 
immense  body  he  could  not  muster  sufficient  interest 
in  football  to  join  the  " squad. "  He  preferred  to  sit  in 
his  window-seat  and  read. 

In  the  course  of  his  junior  year  he  chanced  in  his 
haphazard  reading  upon  a  German  scientific  review 
which  contained  an  account  of  some  excavations  in 
the  territory  of  Ancient  Assyria.  It  told  of  the  dis 
covery  of  a  large  quantity  of  " brick"  books,  in  a  lan 
guage  as  yet  undeciphered.  The  matter  interested 
him,  and  he  set  out  to  find  what  the  library  contained 
on  the  subject.  He  was  surprised  at  the  amount  of 
material  there  was.  The  story  of  how  Rawlinson  and 
others  had  deciphered  unknown  languages  fascinated 
him.  He  stayed  on  in  Cambridge  two  months  after 
graduation  to  finish  up  this  subject.  He  found  more 
information  about  the  "brick"  books  which  had 
first  caught  his  attention.  Several  hundred  of  them 
had  been  brought  to  a  museum  in  Berlin.  Having 
nothing  pressing  to  do  in  America,  he  went  over  to  have 
a  look  at  them.  All  the  spoil  from  this  expedition  had 
been  housed  in  one  room.  After  studying  the  bricks  for 
a  couple  of  days,  he  thought  he  had  found  a  clew.  He 


92  COMRADE  YETTA 

could  get  more  ready  access  to  them  if  he  was  a 
student,  so  he  went  to  the  University  and  enrolled. 
He  had  no  idea  of  staying  long,  nor  of  attending 
courses  in  the  University,  but  his  only  plan  for  life  in 
America  was  to  write  a  book  on  philosophy,  and  that 
could  wait. 

The  first  "  clew  "  proved  to  be  an  illusion.  But  those 
rows  and  rows  of  ancient  bricks,  with  their  cryptic 
writing  which  hid  the  story  of  a  lost  civilization,  had 
piqued  his  curiosity.  Again  he  decided  that  his 
work  on  philosophy  could  wait. 

It  was  two  years  before  he  satisfactorily  translated 
the  first  brick.  Once  having  found  the  key,  his  progress 
was  rapid.  If  he  had  been  in  touch  with  the  Assyri- 
ologists  of  the  University,  he  would  probably  have  con 
fided  in  them  at  once.  But  he  knew  none  of  them 
personally,  and  he  went  on  with  his  work  single-handed. 
It  took  him  six  months  to  translate  the  entire  collection. 
They  contained  the  official  records  of  a  certain  King 
of  kings,  who  had  ruled  over  a  long-forgotten  people 
called  the  Haktites.  It  took  him  six  months  more  to 
arrange  a  grammar  and  dictionary  of  the  Haktite  tongue. 
Then  he  remembered  the  University  and  took  his  two 
manuscripts  to  the  Professor  of  Assyriology.  He  was 
decidedly  provoked  by  the  first  scepticism  which 
greeted  his  announcement,  even  more  bored  by  the 
hullabaloo  which  the  savants  made  over  him,  when 
investigation  proved  the  truth  of  his  claim.  He  stayed 
a  year  longer  in  Europe,  to  see  an  edition  of  his  work 
through  the  press  at  Berlin  and  to  translate  the  scattered 
Haktite  bricks  in  other  museums.  This  took  him  as 
far  as  Teheran  and  afield  to  the  site  of  the  excavations, 
where  there  were  numerous  inscriptions  on  the  stone- 


NEW  FRIENDS  93 

work  which  was  too  unwieldy  to  be  taken  to  Euro 
pean  museums.  Then  he  came  to  New  York  to  take  up 
the  position  of  Instructor  in  Assyriology  in  Columbia. 
He  had  stipulated  that  he  should  be  granted  a  great 
deal  of  leisure.  It  was  not  a  hard  matter  for  the 
University  to  arrange,  as  there  was  no  great  clamor 
among  the  students  to  learn  Haktite.  But  Longman 
had  insisted  on  the  leisure,  so  that  he  would  have 
opportunity  to  write  his  book  on  philosophy,  which 
seemed  to  him  very  serious  and  infinitely  more  im 
portant  than  the  dead  lore  of  his  department.  He 
was  vexed  with  himself  for  having  wasted  so  much 
time  and  acquired  such  fame  in  so  useless  a  branch  of 
human  knowledge. 

He  established  himself  in  the  top  floor  of  a  two-story 
building  on  Washington  Square,  East.  He  took  the  place 
on  a  long  lease,  and  making  free  with  the  partitions, 
had  arranged  a  big  study  in  the  front  overlooking  the 
Square,  a  bath,  a  bedroom,  and  a  kitchenette  behind  it. 
Two  big  rooms  in  the  rear  he  sublet  as  storerooms  to 
the  carriage  painter  who  rented  the  ground  floor.  Hav 
ing  a  horror  of  servants,  he  made  his  own  coffee  in  the 
morning  and  Signora  Rocco,  a  worthy  Italian  woman, 
came  in  with  a  latch-key  when  he  was  out  at  lunch  and 
put  the  place  in  order.  Twice  a  week  he  had  to  go  up 
to  the  University. 

The  rest  of  his  time  went  to  what  he  considered  his 
real  work.  He  was  to  call  his  book  A  Synthetic 
Philosophy.  Hundreds  of  would-be  sages  had  cut 
themselves  off  from  all  active  communion  with  life, 
had  retired  to  the  seclusion  of  a  study  or  cave,  and  had 
written  solemn  tomes  on  what  Man  ought  to  think. 
Longman  was  going  to  discover  what  his  kind  really 


94  COMRADE  YETTA 

did  think.  He  went  about  it  in  a  systematic,  almost 
statistical  way. 

He  had  reduced  the  more  important  of  the  various 
possible  human  beliefs  to  twenty-odd  propositions  and 
many  subheads,  all  of  which  he  had  had  printed  on  a 
double  sheet  of  foolscap.  It  began  boldly  by  raising 
the  question  of  Deity.  From  the  heights  of  metaphysi 
cal  discussion  of  the  Existence,  the  Unity,  and  the  Attri 
butes  of  God,  it  came  nearer  to  earth  by  inquiring  into 
Heaven  and  a  belief  in  a  future  existence.  Again 
it  soared  up  into  the  icy  altitude  of  Pure  Reason  and 
the  Erkenntniss  Theorie.  Again  it  swooped  down  to 
more  practical  questions  of  Ethics,  what  one  con 
sidered  the  summum  bonum  and  under  what  cir 
cumstances  one  conceded  the  right  to  suicide,  and 
whether  or  not  one  believed  that  every  man  has  his 
price.  Whenever  Longman  found  willing  subjects  he 
cross-questioned  them  by  the  hour.  From  the  notes 
he  took  he  tabulated  the  victim's  credo  on  one  of  the 
printed  questionnaires  and  filed  it  away.  Almost 
every  one  laughed  at  his  idea,  but  with  the  same  dogged 
momentum  which  had  kept  him  bent  for  months  on 
and  over  Assyrian  bricks,  which  interested  him  only 
slightly,  he  stuck  to  this  work  which  interested  him 
deeply. 

In  a  way  he  was  especially  fitted  for  it.  Every  one 
liked  him  and  found  it  easy  to  talk  freely  with  him. 
And  he  was  quick  to  detect  any  cant  or  lack  of  sincerity. 
If  he  wrote  "yes"  after  the  question,  "Do  you  believe  it 
pays  to  be  honest?"  it  was  the  subject's  basic  belief, 
not  a  pretence  nor  a  pose.  And  he  had  a  knack  of 
putting  his  questions  in  simple,  comprehensible  lan 
guage.  The  printed  questionnaire  bristled  with  ap- 


NEW  FRIENDS  95 

palling  technical  words.  But  he  did  not  use  such 
phrases  as  " ultimate  reality/'  "the  categorical  im 
perative."  He  did  not  ask  his  subject  if  his  idea  of 
God  was  anthropomorphic.  Very  few  of  the  people 
whose  faith  he  analyzed  would  have  understood  such 
terms. 

It  was  the  essence  of  his  proposition  that  he  should 
tabulate  the  convictions  of  all  sorts  and  conditions  of 
men.  And  in  his  quest  for  varied  points  of  view  he  had 
come  into  very  close  contact  with  a  strange  mixture 
of  people.  Into  his  " operating  room/'  as  Mabel 
Train  derisively  called  his  study,  he  had  enticed  college 
professors  and  policemen,  well-bred  young  matrons 
and  street- walkers.  One  of  his  sheets  recorded  the 
intimate  convictions  of  the  man  downstairs  who 
painted  carriages ;  another,  those  of  a  famous  opera 
singer.  The  Catholic  Bishop  of  New  York  had  under 
gone  the  ordeal  and  a  Salvation  Army  lassie,  who  had 
knocked  at  his  door  to  sell  a  War-cry,  had  come 
in  to  try  to  convert  him.  She  had  been  very  much 
distressed  by  his  perplexing  questions,  but  like  all  the 
rest  had  quickly  fallen  captive  to  his  gentle  manners 
and  understanding  eyes.  She  had  dropped  her  mis 
sionary  pose  and  had  talked  freely  to  him,  not  only  of 
her  beliefs,  but  also  of  her  doubts. 

Almost  every  one  who  had  gone  through  the  ordeal 
remembered  it  with  a  strange,  awed  sort  of  pleasure. 
It  is  so  very  rarely  that  we  find  any  one  to  whom  we 
can  tell  the  truth. 

There  was  a  wreck  of  a  man,  an  habitue  of  cheap 
lodging-houses  and  gin-mills,  who  would  tell  you  the 
story  on  the  slightest  provocation.  One  cold  October 
night  when  he  had  no  money  for  a  bed  and  was  trying 


96  COMRADE  YETTA 

to  live  through  the  night  on  a  park  bench  with  a  morning 
paper  for  a  blanket,  a  man  had  asked  him  if  he  wanted  a 
drink.  Not  suspecting  the  good  fortune  which  had  be 
fallen  him,  he  had  followed  Longman  to  the  "  operating 
room."  First  there  had  been  a  stiff  bracer  of  whiskey 
-  "good  Scotch  whiskey,  sir,"  —  and  then  a  plentiful 
cold  supper  of  bread  and  cheese  and  sardines  and  a 
steaming  cup  of  coffee  —  "as  much  as  I  could  eat,  sir" 

—  and  a  cigar  —  "as  long  as  yer  foot,  sir.     He  was  a 
real  gentleman,  sir,  and  he  talked  to  me  like  I  was  a 
gentleman." 

There  was  a  young  wife  of  an  elderly  professor. 
Some  of  the  ladies  of  the  faculty  raised  their  eyebrows 
when  her  name  was  mentioned  and  did  not  go  to  her 
teas.  She  had  been  smitten  by  Longman's  broad 
shoulders  and  gentle  bearishness  and  had  quite  eagerly 
consented  to  come  to  his  study.  She  did  not  tell  any 
body  about  it,  but  she  cried  when  she  thought  about  it 

—  cried  that  he  had  not  asked  her  again. 

Whether  or  not  Longman's  book  promised  any  great 
usefulness  to  humanity,  the  preparing  of  it  was  of  un 
doubted  use  to  him.  He  had  seen  life  at  close  quarters, 
with  what  Mirabeau  called  "terrible  intimacy."  His 
heart  had  grown  very  large  there  in  his  "operating 
room."  As  well  as  he  could  he  hid  his  ever  ready 
sympathy  under  a  surface  joviality  and  flippancy. 
There  were  very  few  people  beside  Mabel  who  realized 
what  a  sentimentalist  he  was.  He  was  a  brother  to 
Abou  ben  Adhem.  And  that  love  of  his  fellow-men 
necessarily  brought  him  into  bitter  revolt  against 
things  as  they  are.  But  he  had  no  collective  sense ;  he 
loved  his  fellow  men  individually.  He  had  no  feeling 
for  mass  movements.  Intellectually  he  realized  the 


NEW  FRIENDS  97 

need  of  united  activity,  he  believed  in  trade-unions 
and  socialism.  But  the  sight  of  a  crowd  always  made 
him  angry.  He  was  an  ardent  apostle  of  the  Social 
Revolution.  But  he  could  not  work  harmoniously 
with  an  organization.  So  the  socialists  called  him  an 
Anarchist.  He  did  not  care  what  he  was  called.  But 
most  of  the  difference  between  his  very  small  living 
expenses  and  his  liberal  income  found  its  way  unob 
trusively  into  some  socialist  or  labor  organization. 

But  for  three  years  now  Mabel  Train  had  been  the 
"Cause"  to  which  he  gave  his  devotion. 

She  was  also  of  the  class  of  those  who,  never  having 
had  to  work,  had  volunteered  in  the  cause  of  those  who 
must.  But  she  had  done  so  in  a  more  intense,  thorough 
going,  and  practical  way  than  had  Longman.  She  had 
given  not  only  what  money  she  could  spare,  but  herself. 

She  was  a  graduate  of  the  University  of  Wisconsin, 
and  having  come  under  the  influence  of  the  able  and 
daring  group  of  economists  on  that  faculty  had  been 
educated  to  a  position  in  labor  matters  which  is  very 
nearly  as  radical  as  that  of  the  socialists.  One  of  her 
professors  had  told  her  that  in  all  his  experience  in 
coeducation  he  had  never  encountered  a  woman  with 
a  more  masculine  brain.  At  the  time  she  had  felt 
complimented.  She  had,  at  twenty,  been  proud  that 
she  did  not  have  hysterics,  that  her  mind  did  not 
have  " fainting  fits,"  that  she  could  tackle  the  prob 
lems  of  the  class-room  in  the  same  graceless,  unin 
spired,  direct  way  that  men  did.  At  twenty-seven 
she  was  beginning  to  realize  that  life  was  not  a  class 
room  exercise  and  that  there  were  certain  inevitable 
problems  of  womanhood  which  could  not  be  solved 
man-fashion.  She  felt  herself  cold  in  comparison  to 


98  COMRADE  YETTA 

other  women.  The  romances  of  the  girls  in  college 
had  rather  disgusted  her.  At  twenty-seven  she  would 
have  given  her  right  hand  for  the  ability  to  lose  her 
head  like  some  of  the  shop-girls  among  whom  she 
worked. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  the  professor  had  been  quite 
wrong  in  calling  her  intellect  masculine  —  it  was  only 
a  remarkably  good  one.  It  had  the  fearlessness  to 
look  the  folly  of  our  industrial  system  in  the  face  and 
understand  it.  She  had  a  deep  womanliness  which 
made  it  impossible  for  her  to  accept  a  manner  of  life 
which  was  in  contradiction  to  her  intellectual  convic 
tions.  Thinking  as  she  did  that  the  relations  between 
capital  and  labor  were  basically  unjust,  it  was  neces 
sary  for  her  to  spend  her  life  in  the  fight  for  justice. 

What  might  be  called  "the  normal  mother  instinct" 
had  been  denied  her.  Her  woman's  nature  had  turned 
into  an  ardent  desire  to  "mother"  the  race.  The 
babes  who  die  unborn,  those  who  are  poisoned  by  bad 
milk,  who  wither  up  from  bad  air,  whose  growth  is 
stunted  by  bad  food  —  all  the  sad  little  children  of 
the  poor  —  were  her  own  brood.  She  wrote  rarely 
to  her  two  blood  sisters  —  she  was  the  big  sister  of 
all  the  girls  who  are  alone. 

Her  parents  were  entirely  out  of  sympathy  with 
her  interest  in  working  people.  Principally  to  escape 
their  ceaseless  nagging,  she  had  come  East.  For 
several  years  she  had  been  the  head  of  the  Woman's 
Trade  Union  League.  Her  gentle  breeding  made  her 
successful  with  the  wealthy  ladies  on  whom  the  League 
depended  for  support,  the  working  girls  idolized  her, 
the  rather  rough  men  of  the  Central  Federated  Union 
had  come  to  recognize  that  she  never  got  up  in  meeting 


NEW  FRIENDS  99 

unless  she  had  something  to  say.  And  the  bosses  com 
plimented  her  ability  by  hating  her  cordially. 

Most  of  the  young  men  who  tried  to  court  her  — 
and  there  was  a  constant  stream  of  them,  for  she 
was  a  very  attractive  woman  —  fared  badly.  She  was 
distressingly  illusive.  Her  intellect  was  so  lively  that 
it  was  hard  to  admire  her  manifold  charms.  She 
wanted  the  people  who  talked  to  her  to  think.  And 
she  checked  sentimentality  with  scornful  laughter. 

Things  were  further  complicated  for  her  would-be 
suitors  by  the  fact  that  Mabel,  when  she  was  not  very 
busy,  was  always  accompanied  by  her  room-mate  Elea 
nor  Mead.  Eleanor  did  not  look  like  a  formidable 
duenna.  She  was  of  a  pure  pre-Raphaelite  type.  By 
profession  she  was  an  interior  decorator,  and  her  busi 
ness  card  said,  "  Formerly  with  Liberty  —  Avenue  de 
1' Opera,  Paris."  She  carefully  cultivated  the  appear 
ance  of  an  Esthete.  She  nearly  always  dressed  in 
rich  greens  and  old  golds  and  was  never  truly  happy 
except  during  the  limited  season  when  she  could  wear 
fresh  daffodils  in  her  girdle.  She  was  clever  at  her 
work  and  gained  a  very  good  income,  which  she  aug 
mented  by  fashionable  entertainments  where  she 
lectured  in  French  on  subjects  of  Art  and  sometimes 
gave  mildly  dramatic  readings  of  Maeterlinck  and 
other  French  mystics. 

Most  men  found  her  style  of  beauty  too  watery. 
But  one  of  the  " Younger  Choir"  had  taken  her  as  his 
Muse  and  had  dedicated  a  string  of  Petrarchian  son 
nets  to  her.  Eleanor  had  been  rather  flattered  by  the 
tribute  until  the  unlucky  bard  had  been  forced  by  the 
exigencies  of  his  rhyme  to  say  that  she  had  "eyes  of 
sapphire."  People  had  begun  to  make  sport  of  her 


100  COMRADE  YETTA 

" sapphire"  eyes  —  they  did  have  a  rather  washed-out 
look  —  and  had  begun  to  call  her  "Sapphire."  Most 
of  Mabel's  lovers  shortened  it  disrespectfully  to  "  Saph." 
She  had  given  this  aspiring  versifier  the  sack,  and  his 
long  hair  was  no  longer  to  be  seen  in  the  highly  decor 
ated  apartment  on  Washington  Square,  South. 

Although  her  appearance  was  not  at  all  dreadful, 
she  was  feared  and  hated  by  all  Mabel's  admirers.  It 
was  impossible  to  call  on  Miss  Train  —  it  was  neces 
sary  to  call  on  both  of  them.  Without  any  open  dis 
courtesy,  with  a  well-bred  effort  to  hide  her  jealousy, 
Eleanor  made  the  courting  of  her  friend  a  hideous 
ordeal.  Most  aspirants  dropped  out  of  the  race  after 
a  wry  few  calls.  But  for  three  years  Longman  had 
held  on.  It  had  not  taken  him  long  to  know  what 
was  the  matter  with  him,  and  after  two  unsuccessful 
efforts  to  see  Mabel  alone  and  tell  her  about  it,  he 
went  one  night  to  the  flat  with  grim  resolution. 

"Miss  Mead,"  he  said  abruptly  on  entering,  "I've 
got  something  very  important  I  want  to  say  to  Miss 
Train.  I  want  to  ask  her  to  marry  me.  Will  vou  be 
so  kind  —  ?" 

He  opened  the  door  leading  into  the  dining-room. 
His  manner  had  been  irresistible.  And  Eleanor  with 
her  head  in  the  air  had  sailed  out  past  him.  He  shut 
the  door  carefully.  All  the  evening  long,  Eleanor 
knelt  down  outside  it,  with  her  ear  glued  to  the  key 
hole.  But  she  heard  nothing  to  distress  her. 

Longman  got  no  satisfaction.  Mabel  had  rejected 
his  offer  as  decisively  as  possible.  But  he  had  refused 
to  be  discouraged.  The  third  time  that  he  forced  a 
proposal  on  her,  it  had  made  her  angry  and  she  had 
said  that  she  did  not  care  to  see  him  again.  A  few 


NEW  FRIENDS  101 

days  later  she  received  a  very  humble  letter  from  him. 
He  pleaded  for  a  chance  to  be  her  friend,  and  solemnly 
promised  not  to  say  a  word  of  love  for  six  months. 
She  had  not  answered  it,  but  the  next  Sunday  he  came 
to  the  flat  for  tea.  They  had  drifted  into  a  close  but 
unsound  friendship.  Eleanor's  dislike  for  him  was  so 
evident  —  she  maintained  that  the  way  he  had  banished 
her  to  the  dining-room  proved  that  he  was  no  gentle 
man —  that  he  very  rarely  went  to  their  apartment. 
But  on  every  possible  occasion  he  met  Mabel  outside. 
The  people  who  saw  him  at  her  side,  night  after  night 
at  labor  meetings,  assumed  that  they  were  engaged. 
This  added  intimacy  only  whetted  Longman's  love. 
From  bodyguard  he  fell  to  the  position  of  slave.  He 
ran  errands  for  her. 

With  the  masculine  attitude  towards  such  matters 
he  did  not  believe  that  she  would  accept  such  untiring 
sendee  if  there  was  no  hope. 

When  at  the  end  of  the  stipulated  six  months  she 
refused  him  again,  —  just  as  coldly  as  at  first,  — 
it  was  a  bitter  surprise  to  him.  If  a  man  had  acted 
so,  Longman  would  have  unhesitatingly  called  him 
a  cad. 

He  went  away  to  the  mountains  to  think  it  out. 
In  a  week  he  was  back,  proposing  again.  Once  more 
she  became  angry.  When  she  said  "no,"  she  meant 
''no.''  She  did  not  want  to  marry  him  and  did  not 
think  she  ever  would.  He  had  asked  to  be  her  friend. 
Well.  She  enjoyed  his  friendship,  but  if  he  was  going 
to  bother  her  every  few  days  with  distasteful  proposals 
of  marriage  it  made  friendship  impossible.  For  two 
weeks  he  struggled  With  himself  in  solitude,  torn  be 
tween  his  desire  to  see  her  and  his  pride.  Then  he 


102  COMRADE  YETTA 

went  to  a  meeting  where  he  knew  she  would  speak  and 
walked  home  with  her. 

So  it  had  recommenced  and  so  it  had  continued  — 
in  all  three  years.  A  deep  camaraderie  had  grown 
between  them.  They  knew  each  other  better  than 
many  couples  who  have  been  married  twice  as  long. 
But  Longman  could  see  no  progress  towards  the  con 
summation  he  so  earnestly  desired.  During  the  three 
years  there  had  been  alternate  moods  of  hope  and 
despair.  At  times  he  thought  she  surely  must  come 
to  love  him.  At  other  times  the  half  loaf  of  inter 
course  tasted  bitter  as  quinine.  He  told  himself  that 
he  was  a  weak  fool,  a  spectacle  for  the  gods  to  laugh 
at,  hanging  to  the  skirts  of  a  woman  who  had  no  care 
for  him.  At  times  he  said,  "Let  all  the  rest  go  hang, 
to-day 's  sweet  friendship  is  better  than  nothing. " 
There  were  sad  and  angry  moments  when  he  paced 
up  and  down  in  his  study  and  cursed  her  and  himself 
and  his  infatuation  —  and  the  next  moment  he  wanted 
to  kiss  the  dust  she  had  trod  upon. 

But  steadily  the  torment  of  their  relationship  grew 
worse.  More  and  more  insistent  had  become  the  idea 
of  going  away.  Perhaps  she  would  miss  his  friendship 
and  call  him  back.  But  he  had  been  too  deeply  en 
slaved  to  dare  so  drastic  a  revolt.  However,  that  morn 
ing  had  brought  him  mail  which  had  suddenly  crystal 
lized  this  idea.  He  had  resolved  to  put  it  to  the  test. 

"Mabel,"  he  said  as  they  entered  Washington 
Square,  "if  you're  not  too  tired  let's  go  up  to  the 
Lafayette  for  a  while.  I've  got  something  important 
to  talk  over  with  you." 

A  look  of  vexation  crossed  her  face,  which,  with 
quick  and  painful  sensitiveness,  he  interpreted. 


NEW  FRIENDS  103 

"No,"  he  said  gravely,  "I  won't  bore  you  with  any 
professions  of  affection.  It's  a  business  matter  on 
which  I'd  like  your  advice." 

"  Why  not  come  up  to  the  flat ;  we've  some  beer,  and 
Eleanor's  been  making  some  fudge.  It's  more  com 
fortable  than  that  noisy  cafe." 

"Very  well,  then,"  he  said  stiffly.  "I'll  leave  you 
at  your  door." 

"Now,  Walter  —  don't  be  a  fool.  What  are  you  so 
sour  about  to-night?  You  haven't  opened  your 
mouth  for  six  blocks." 

"You  know  very  well  that  I  can't  talk  with  "Saph" 
on  the  job  —  she  hates  me.  I'd  like  to  talk  this  over 
with  you." 

"All  right,"  she  said,  shaking  his  arm  to  cheer  him 
up.  "But  don't  be  quite  so  grumpy,  just  because  I 
called  you  a  sentimentalist." 

Over  the  marble-topped  table  in  the  cafe*,  he  told 
her  that  a  letter  had  come  inviting  him  to  join  an 
expedition,  organized  by  the  French  Government, 
to  excavate  some  Haktite  ruins  in  Persia.  From  the 
point  of  view  of  an  Assyriologist  it  was  a  flattering 
offer;  they  had  selected  him  as  the  most  eminent 
American  in  that  department.  But  it  would  be  a 
three  or  four  years'  undertaking  in  one  of  the  most 
inaccessible  corners  of  the  globe.  They  would  prob 
ably  get  mail  no  oftener  than  two  or  three  times  a 
year.  And  after  all  he  was  more  interested  in  the 
thoughts  of  live  men  than  in  mummies  and  cuneiform 
inscriptions.  It  would  stop  his  work  on  philosophy. 

"In  fact,  Mabel,"  he  ended,  "there  is  only  one  thing 
that  makes  me  think  of  accepting.  I  can't  stand 
this.  I  don't  want  to  bring  up  the  forbidden  subject. 


104  COMRADE  YETTA 

But  I'm  tired  —  worn  out  —  with  hiding  it.     If  I  stay 
here  in  New  York,  I'm  sure  to  —  bore  you." 

He  tried  to  smile  lightly,  but  it  was  not  much  better 
than  the  smile  with  which  we  ask  the  dentist  if  it  is 
going  to  hurt.  Mabel  dug  about  in  her  cafe  parfait  for 
a  moment  without  replying.  She  understood  all  the 
things  he  had  not  said.  At  last  she  did  the  unselfish, 
the  kindly  thing,  which,  if  she  had  been  a  man,  she 
would  have  done  long  before.  She  sent  him  away. 

"It  looks  to  me  like  a  great  opportunity.  It  isn't 
only  an  honor  for  past  achievements,  but  a  chance 
for  new  and  greater  ones.  Sometimes  I  poke  fun  at 
your  Synthetic  Philosophy,  but  seriously  I  don't  think 
it  is  as  big  a  thing  as  your  Assyriology.  Whether 
you  like  it  or  not  the  Fates  have  given  you  a  talent 
for  that.  Your  wanting  to  do  something  else  —  write 
philosophy  —  always  seems  to  me  like  a  great  violinist 
who  wants  to  be  a  jockey  or  chauffeur.  You're  really 
at  the  very  top  as  an  Assyriologist.  It's  not  only  me 
—  but  most  of  your  friends  —  think  you  have  more 
talent  for  that.  I  think  you'd  best  accept  it." 

Longman  swallowed  his  medicine  like  a  man.  A  few 
minutes  later  he  left  Mabel  at  her  door. 

She  found  "Saph"  stretched  out  a  la  Mme.  Recamier 
on  the  dull  green  Empire  sofa. 

"Will  you  never  get  out  of  the  habit  of  staying  to 
sweep  up  after  the  ball  ?"  she  asked  languidly. 

"I  haven't  been  sweeping  up,"  Mabel  replied;  "I've 
been  over  at  the  Lafayette  with  Walter.  Now  don't 
begin  to  sulk,"  she  went  on;  "he's  been  telling  me 
great  news.  The  French  Government  has  asked  him 
to  go  on  one  of  their  expeditions  to  Central  Asia.  He's 
going." 


NEW  FRIENDS  105 

" Goody,"  Eleanor  cried,  jumping  up.     "I'm  glad  !" 
"I'm  not/'  Mabel  said;  "I'll  miss  him  no  end." 
"Mabel  Train,  I  believe  you're  in  love  with  that 


"No,  I'm  not.  And  I'm  half  sorry  I'm  not.  I'm 
tired,  done  up.  Good  night." 

"Don't  you  want  some  fudge  ?  —  it  turned  out  fine." 

"No.     Goodnight." 

Mabel  did  not  exactly  bang  her  bedroom  door,  but 
she  certainly  shut  it  decisively,  and  for  more  than  an 
hour  sat  by  her  window,  watching  the  ceaseless  move 
ment  in  the  Square.  Once  she  saw  Longman  walk 
under  an  arc-light.  His  head  was  bent,  his  hands 
deep  in  his  pockets.  Although  the  sight  of  him  left 
her  quite  cold,  her  eyes  filled  with  tears  as  they  had 
not  done  for  years.  It  was  just  because  the  sight  of 
him  left  her  cold  that  tears  came. 


CHAPTER  IX 

YETTA   ENLISTS 

YETTA  did  not  fall  asleep  readily  after  the  ball. 
Her  mind  was  a  turmoil.  If  she  tried  to  fix  her  atten 
tion  on  this  question  of  Liberty  which  had  stirred 
her  so  deeply,  she  was  suddenly  thrown  into  confusion 
by  a  memory  of  the  cold  fear  which  Harry  Klein's 
hard  eyes  and  brutal  grip  had  caused  her.  She  felt 
that  she  must  think  out  her  relationship  with  him 
clearly  if  she  was  ever  to  be  free  from  fear,  but  again 
this  problem  would  be  disturbed  by  the  thought  of 
her  wonderful  new  friends. 

Sleep  when  it  came  at  last  was  so  heavy  that  she  did 
not  wake  at  the  accustomed  hour  in  the  morning. 
When  Mrs.  Goldstein  came  into  the  bedroom  to  rouse 
her,  she  was  startled  by  the  sight  of  the  new  hat  and 
white  shoes,  which  Yetta  had  been  too  excited  the  night 
before  to  hide. 

The  first  thing  Yetta  knew,  there  was  a  great  com 
motion  in  her  room.  Her  uncle  and  aunt,  neither 
more  than  half  dressed,  were  accusing  her  loudly  of  her 
crime  and  heaping  maledictions  on  her  head.  It  was 
several  minutes  before  Yetta  fully  awoke  to  the  situa 
tion.  And  when  she  did,  a  strange  transformation 
had  taken  place  within  her;  she  was  no  longer  afraid 
of  the  sorry  couple. 

106 


YETTA  ENLISTS  107 

"Yes,"  she  said,  sitting  up  in  bed,  drawing  the 
blanket  about  her  shoulders,  "I  went  to  a  ball.  If 
you  don't  like  it,  I'll  find  some  other  place  to  live." 

The  garrulous  old  couple  fell  silent.  Goldstein's 
resentment  against  his  daughter  Rachel  was  fully  as 
much  because  she  had  stopped  bringing  him  money 
to  get  drunk  on  as  because  she  had  "gone  wrong." 
After  a  minute's  amazement  at  Yetta's  sudden  dis 
play  of  independence,  they  began  a  sing-song  duet 
about  ingratitude.  Had  they  not  done  everything 
for  her  ?  Taken  her  in  when  she  was  a  penniless  or 
phan  ?  Clothed  and  fed  and  sheltered  her  ? 

"And  haven't  I  paid  you  all  my  wages  for  four 
years?"  she  replied.  "Go  away.  I  want  to  get 
dressed." 

At  the  shop  Yetta  found  that  the  story  of  her  speech 
had  been  spread  by  one  of  the  girls  at  the  second  table 
who  had  been  at  the  ball.  Fortunately  this  girl  had 
not  witnessed  the  scene  with  Harry  Klein.  Yetta 
found  the  women  at  her  table  discussing  the  matter 
in  whispers  when  she  arrived.  In  the  moment  before 
the  motor  started  the  day's  work,  the  bovine  Mrs. 
Levy  told  her  that  she  was  a  fool. 

"You've  got  a  good  job,"  she  said.  "You'll  make 
trouble  with  your  bread  and  butter.  You're  a  fool." 

"Better  be  careful,"  the  cheerful  Mrs.  Weinstein 
advised.  "Don't  I  know?  My  husband's  a  union 
man.  Of  course  the  unions  are  right,  but  they  make 
trouble." 

"It  ain't  no  use,"  the  sad  and  worn  Mrs.  Cohen 
coughed  from  the  foot  of  the  table.  "There  ain't 
nothing  that'll  do  any  good.  Women  ain't  got  no 
chance." 


108  COMRADE  YETTA 

The  motor  began  with  a  roar. 

It  is  a  strange  fact  of  life,  how  sometimes  a  sudden 
light  will  be  turned  on  a  familiar  environment,  making 
it  all  seem  new  and  entirely  different  from  what  we 
are  accustomed  to.  Four  years  Yetta  had  worked  in 
that  shop.  She  had  accepted  it  all  as  an  inevitability, 
which  no  more  admitted  change  or  " reform"  than  the 
courses  of  the  stars.  The  speeches  to  which  she  had 
listened  made  it  suddenly  appear  in  its  true  human 
aspect.  It  was  no  longer  a  thing  unalterable,  it  was 
an  invention  of  human  greed.  It  was  a  laboratory 
where,  instead  of  base  metals,  the  blood  of  women 
and  young  girls  was  transmuted  into  gold.  The 
alchemists  had  failed  to  find  the  Philosopher's  Stone. 
The  sweat-shop  was  a  modern  substitute.  It  was  a 
contrivance  by  which  such  priceless  things  as  youth 
and  health  and  the  hope  of  the  next  generation  could  be 
coined  into  good  and  lawful  money  of  the  realm. 

Her  nimble  fingers  flying  subconsciously  at  the 
terrible  speed  through  the  accustomed  motions,  Yetta 
saw  all  the  grim  reality  of  the  shop  as  never  before. 
She  saw  the  broken  door  to  the  shamefully  filthy  toilet, 
saw  the  closed,  unwashed  windows,  which  meant 
vitiated,  tuberculosis-laden  air,  saw  the  backs  of  the 
women  bent  into  unhealthy  attitudes,  saw  the  strained 
look  in  their  eyes.  More  vaguely  she  saw  a  vision  of 
the  might-be  life  of  these  women,  —  clean  homes  and 
happy  children.  And  behind  her  she  felt  the  existence 
of  the  "office,"  where  Jake  Goldfogle  sat  and  watched 
them  through  his  spying  window,  and  contrived  new 
fines.  And  even  more  clearly  than  when  she  had  made 
her  speech,  she  saw  her  own  function  in  this  infernal 
scheme  of  greed,  saw  herself  a  lieutenant  of  the  slave- 

• 


YETTA  ENLISTS  109 

driver  behind  her.  She  wondered  if  the  other  women 
hated  her  as  she  deserved  to  be  hated.  But  habit  is  a 
hard  thing  to  break,  and  her  fingers  sped  on  as  of  old. 

When  the  day's  work  was  over,  a  sorry  sort  of  a 
woman,  named  Levine,  a  woman  who  had  had  many 
children  and  more  troubles  and  very  few  joys,  lingered 
in  the  shop  and  told  Goldfogle  the  gossip  about  Yetta's 
speech.  She  had  expected  some  reward,  a  quarter  — 
or  even  a  dime  —  with  which  to  buy  a  little  more  food 
for  her  children.  But  she  got  only  curses.  During 
the  day  one  of  Jake's  loans  had  been  called.  What 
was  he  to  do,  hounded  by  his  creditors,  threatened 
from  within  ?  If  he  had  been  an  Oriental  despot  he 
would  have  slain  the  bearer  of  these  bad  tidings. 

Yetta,  afraid  of  meeting  Harry  Klein  outside,  clung 
as  close  as  might  be  to  Mrs.  Weinstein  on  her  way 
home.  She  ran  the  few  blocks  she  had  to  go  alone. 

It  was  a  useless  precaution.  He  had  no  intention  of 
accosting  her  that  night.  The  official  dispensers  of 
Justice  had  taken  small  interest  in  the  charge  against 
him.  He  had  been  promptly  bailed  out  and  knew  the 
papers  would  get  lost  in  some  pigeonhole.  But  al 
though  he  was  not  worrying  about  his  arrest,  he  was 
more  unhappy  than  he  had  been  since  the  first  day  he 
had  spent  in  jail  as  a  boy.  Like  most  crooks  he  be 
lieved  in  "luck."  Apparently  his  luck  had  turned. 
There  was  only  one  consolation.  It  had  been  a  single- 
handed  game.  None  of  his  followers  knew  of  his 
downfall.  So  he  had  set  about  planning  a  spectacular 
coup  which  would  restore  his  prestige  if  the  story  of 
his  disgrace  got  out.  His  vengeance,  to  be  complete, 
should  have  included  Longman,  but  the  scent  was 
too  faint.  He  did  not  know  his  adversary's  name. 


110  COMRADE  YETTA 

But  he  knew  just  where  to  put  his  finger  on  Yetta. 
He  was  a  discreet  young  man,  and  he  wanted  to  be  very 
sure  there  would  be  no  slip-up.  So  this  night  he  trailed 
along  behind  her,  safely  hidden  in  the  crowd.  When 
he  saw  that  she  had  walked  home  along  the  accus 
tomed  streets,  he  smiled  contentedly. 

"It's  a  cinch,"  he  told  himself. 

During  the  day  an  event  had  occurred  in  the  Gold 
stein  flat;  a  messenger  boy  had  come  with  a  letter 
and  a  bundle  of  pamphlets  for  Yetta.  Even  the  post 
man  is  a  rare  visitor  to  such  homes,  and  the  arrival  of 
a  special  messenger  is  talked  about  by  the  whole  street. 
Mr.  Goldstein,  whose  dispute  with  his  niece  had  driven 
him  out  to  find  solace  from  his  troubles,  had,  more 
early  than  usual,  returned  to  the  flat.  He  had  found 
his  wife  very  much  excited  over  the  bundle  which  re 
posed  in  state  on  the  kitchen  table.  He  was  not  so 
befuddled  but  that  he  saw  the  tracts  were  about  Trade 
Unions.  So  when  Yetta  returned  from  her  work  she 
found  a  new  storm  blowing.  As  a  Tammany  man  and 
a  pillar  in  the  Temple  of  Things  as  They  Are  —  it  is 
doubtful  if  he  realized  how  important  he  and  his  kind 
are  in  the  maintenance  of  that  imposing  structure. 
Mr.  Goldstein  had  to  oppose  trade-unions  and  social 
ism.  They  seemed  to  him  more  subversive  of  the 
order  of  Society  than  social  settlements,  dance-halls, 
or  the  Religion  of  the  Goyim.  And  he  was  sufficiently 
intoxicated  to  have  forgotten  the  mercenary  caution 
which  had  in  the  morning  kept  him  from  throwing  out 
the  chief  brandy- winner  of  the  household.  All  through 
her  supper  Yetta  had  to  listen  to  reproaches  —  which 
were  not  too  delicately  worded.  But  they  hardly 
bothered  her.  As  soon  as  she  could  find  a  good  place 


YETTA  ENLISTS  111 

to  live  she  was  going  to  leave.  She  was  not  afraid 
any  more.  And  when  she  had  crammed  sufficient 
food  into  herself,  she  picked  up  the  bigger  of  the  two 
lamps  and  escaped  to  her  room  with  the  pamphlets 
and  the  letter. 

It  had  taken  Mabel  Train  less  than  five  minutes  to 
dictate  the  letter,  although  she  had  two  or  three  times 
stopped  to  attend  to  things  which  she  thought  more 
important.  But  of  course  to  Yetta,  the  letter  seemed 
importance  itself.  It  was  the  first  she  had  ever  re 
ceived,  and  it  was  from  the  most  wonderful  woman  in 
the  world.  Mabel  asked  some  questions  about  the 
shop  and  the  chances  of  organizing  the  vest  trade,  and 
she  urged  Yetta  to  come  to  the  office  of  the  League  to 
see  her.  She  gave  a  list  of  the  meetings  at  which  she 
was  to  speak  the  next  few  nights,  and  asked  Yetta,  if 
it  was  impossible  to  get  off  in  the  daytime,  to  come 
to  one  of  these  meetings.  She  wanted  very  much  to 
have  a  long  talk  with  her  —  above  all  she  hoped  that 
Yetta  would  not  forget  her.  It  was  an  informal  and 
affectionate  letter.  Yetta  read  it  over  five  times,  and 
each  reading  made  her  happier. 

Then  she  turned  to  the  pamphlets  and  did  not  go  to 
bed  until  she  had  finished  them.  It  was  four  years 
since  she  had  read  so  much.  There  were  hard  words 
here  and  there  which  she  did  not  understand,  but  on 
the  whole  they  seemed  wonderfully  clear.  Many  of 
the  questions  which  had  been  perplexing  her  were 
answered,  many  new  ones  raised.  Although  the  read 
ing  made  her  feel  keenly  her  ignorance  —  made  her 
cheeks  burn  with  shame  over  the  years  when  she  had 
brutishly  ceased  to  think  —  she  certainly  understood 
life  better,  she  saw  more  clearly  her  place  in  it. 


112  COMRADE  YETTA 

The  last  of  the  pamphlets  bit  into  her.  It  was  called 
"  Speed."  It  was  written  in  a  violent  and  unjust 
spirit.  The  author  had  failed  to  realize  that  the 
" speeders"  were  human  beings;  that  few,  if  any  of 
them,  were  willing  or  understanding  tools  in  the  hands 
of  the  bosses.  He  spoke  of  them  as  "  traitors  to  their 
comrades,"  "ignoble  creatures  —  Judases  who  sold 
themselves  to  the  oppressors  for  thirty  pieces  of  silver," 
"more  detestable  than  scabs."  To  be  a  "speeder," 
this  author  held,  was  "a  prostitution  more  shameful 
than  that  of  the  streets."  If  Mabel  had  selected  the 
pamphlets,  this  one  would  not  have  been  sent  to  Yetta, 
but  she  had  told  her  stenographer  to  send  "half  a 
dozen."  And  Yetta,  not  knowing  much  about  stenog 
raphers  and  their  blunders,  thought  that  all  this  was 
what  the  wonderful  Miss  Train  thought  about  her. 
She  felt  that  some  deep  expiation  was  necessary  if  she 
wished  to  look  her  new  friends  in  the  face. 

She  was  in  the  grip  of  hurrying  forces.  She  could 
see  but  three  courses  open  before  her.  It  was  possible 
to  go  on  as  she  had  been  doing,  part  of  the  great  ma 
chine  which  was  robbing  mankind  of  its  liberty,  a  blind 
tool  in  the  hands  of  the  tyrants  —  a  tool  until  she  was 
worn  out  and  discarded.  She  might  slip  into  the  hands 
of  some  Harry  Klein.  Or  she  might  risk  all  in  the 
Cause  of  Freedom. 

It  would  be  easier  for  us  to  understand  Yetta's 
outlook  on  life,  if  we  too  had  stood  on  the  very  brink 
of  that  bottomless  abyss;  if  we  realized,  as  she  had 
suddenly  come  to  realize,  how  very  narrow  is  the  margin 
of  safety,  which  even  our  greatest  caution  can  give  us. 
It  did  not  seem  to  her  that  she  was  risking  much  in 
risking  everything  she  had. 


YETTA  ENLISTS  113 

Mabel  Train,  on  the  contrary,  had  joined  the  ranks 
of  Social  Revolt  without  any  compulsion.  She  and 
her  family  were  beneficiaries  of  the  system  to  the  over 
throw  of  which  she  had  dedicated  her  energy.  It 
would  have  been  very  easy  for  her  to  sink  into  the 
smug  complacency  of  the  life  to  which  she  had  been 
born  and  bred.  Why  should  she  not  accept  the  con 
ventional  lies  of  our  civilization  as  her  mother,  her 
sister,  and  her  friends  did?  She  had  been  given  this 
strangely  strong  intellect  which  her  professor  had 
called  masculine,  and  she  could  not  help  but  recognize 
the  " falsehoods."  She  had  also  been  given  a  keen 
sense  of  ethics  and  a  tremendous  pride.  She  could 
not  bear  the  thought  of  being  "the  kept  woman"  of 
Injustice. 

With  all  that  is  ordinarily  called  "good"  at  her  com 
mand,  she  had  voluntarily  chosen  a  hard  and  cheer 
less  life,  a  career  which  was  largely  thankless.  Instead 
of  cotillions  she  went  to  the  balls  of  the  Amalgamated 
Union  of  Skirt  Finishers.  She  had  given  up  a 
comfortable  home  for  light-housekeeping  in  a  flat. 
The  hardest  of  all  was  that  instead  of  being  considered 
an  ordinarily  sane  young  woman,  all  the  people  of  her 
old  life  thought  her  a  crank  and  a  fool. 

Yetta's  situation  was  indeed  different  —  less  heroic 
but  more  tragic.  And  just  in  proportion  as  your  own 
toothache  hurts  you  more  than  your  neighbor's,  it 
was  more  vital.  Her  life  seemed  to  her  shameful,  and 
as  a  price  of  shame  it  offered  her  nothing  but  a  gradual 
rotting  into  barren  uselessness.  Her  first  effort  to 
escape  from  the  vicious  rut  into  which  she  had  fallen 
had  led  her  to  the  brink  of  a  greater  shame,  a  surer 
disaster.  Of  all  the  people  with  whom  life  had  brought 


114  COMRADE  YETTA 


her  into  contact,  One  seemed  |«nn»aHj  good: 
her  father,  laqgmam,  and  Mabel  Train.  They  all 
fa*^M»««y-  QIM*  her  eTO  had  been  opened,  Yetta 
y*fcl  ^adbr  have  given  up  much  more  to  the  Xew 
As  it  was.  the  crusade  IIIIBIIIJ  to  lor  not  a 
sacrifice,  bat  an  escape.  An  kiuatAgjfe  force 


rfpimaly. 

-  I  not  fcanesee  what  f  cam  her  new  fif  e  wookl 

take:  she  w^t  i^^,—*  ^  «•»•.  —  ^  ^^. 

But  she  reached  a  determination  to  seek  oat 
^^  irt  HJT  rarfiriil  fninnlMMlj  JIM!  trfbL 
----  -------   -------   My   :lif  :-:::—     1^:  -^  ' 

r  to  fin  Ae  cue  of  Hany  Klein.    It  was  not  an 
easy  thing  fw  her  to  fold  amor  all  the  «notiojis  ad 
drams  to  which  he  had  gmn  fife    Sfemsaaiv^ 
enlightened  in  such  matters.    She  <fid  mot  ate  cfeariy 
:-"-    ---^--   •:  :ir  "..  -:?  --^  ::  -  ~li;l  ,'  -,  ^.v:;  es.-Are'i 

Allshe  knew  was  that  he  had  Bed  to  her.    He  bad 
with  Us  fcn^jul  words  been  plotting  to  make  her 

Sane  of   Longman's   word*   aft  the 
HHknT  bal  caw  back  tofer  ad  aeMed  to 
£k  had  feiMMr  dreamed  that  aow  one  eookl 
herfreedoin.    That  had  been  an  idle  h«^e  ;  if  die 
to  tnape  faai  ker  &m\  iim.  of 
-i:  :: 


Harry  Hem  did  not  go  to  deep  ontil  hfe  plar^ 
laid.    He  had  had  a  sat^a^oxy  talk  with  the 
Kainesl^whotelc«ithe  romewhidi 
her  way  home  after  die  lefl  Mrs. 
rooms  ^ptiinr  wookl  be  empty  oo  the 


"-:•    "-    ---     ---  -      --    :":   ~:z^.  "    E^"'-.i.i 

thestowt.    At  a  agwd  fitom  him  they  IIH*  to 


YETTA  ENLISTS  115 

out  and  fire  their  revolvers  in  the  air  in  imitation  of  a 
gang  fight.  All  the  homeward  hurrying  crowd  would 
shriek  and  run.  In  the  excitement  he  would  jerk 
Yetta  into  the  dark  doorway. 

He  did  not  like  to  use  such  "strong-arm'*  methods. 
It  was  always  safer  and  generally  easy  to  fool  the  girl 
into  coming  willingly.  But  this  occasion  demanded 
decisive  action.  He  went  over  the  plan  carefully, 
and  could  find  no  flaw  in  it .  ' '  It  *s  a  cinch,  * "  he  repeated 
as  he  went  to  sleep. 

Jake  Goldfogle  did  not  get  to  sleep  at  all.  He 
tossed  about  on  the  bed  in  his  stuffy  tenement  room 
—  which  he  had  hoped  to  leave  so  soon  for  a  Harlem 
flat  —  and  tried  to  think  a  way  out  of  his  difficulties. 
He  had  spent  his  last  resources  in  meeting  the  un 
expectedly  called  loan.  If  trouble  broke  out  in  his 
shop,  there  was  very  little  hope  of  pulling  through. 
It  was  his  nature  to  cross  all  bridges  m  soon  as  he 
heard  of  them.  But  this  one  which  seemed  so  close 
he  could  not  traverse.  Should  he  appeal  to  Yetta  at 
once?  Or  should  he  trust  to  luck,  to  the  chance  of 
the  storm  blowing  over?  All  night  long  he  swung 
from  one  decision  to  the  other.  Hi*  final  conclusion 
was  to  redouble  his  spying,  and  at  the  first  hint  of 
trouble  to  call  Yetta  into  his  office.  He  had  no  doubt 
that  an  offer  of  marriage  would  change  her  into  an  ally. 
:ta,  having  no  idea  how  the  powers  of  dai 


were  again  closing  about  her,  set  out  to  work  in  the 
morning  in  high  spirits  — her  face  illumined  by  her 
new  resolve.  But  her  exaltation  was  short  lived. 
Mrs,  Cohen's  lungs  were  much  worse.  All  through 
the  morning  hours  she  struggled  desperately  with  her 
cough.  Mrs.  Levy  had  seen  the  same  thing  so  often  be- 


116  COMRADE  YETTA 

fore  that  she  gave  it  no  attention.  But  Mrs.  Weinstein's 
merry  eyes  turned  serious.  And  every  cough  tore  at 
Yetta's  heart.  She  was  partly  to  blame.  During 
the  noon  respite  she  and  Mrs.  Weinstein  took  care  of 
the  consumptive  woman,  tried  to  tempt  her  to  eat 
with  the  choicest  morsels  of  their  none  too  savory 
lunches.  Yetta  urged  her  to  go  home  for  the  afternoon 
and  rest.  But  that  was  impossible.  Goldfogle  would 
"fire"  her  if  she  left,  and  she  needed  the  job. 

So  when  the  short  lull  was  over,  the  women  took  their 
places  about  the  table.  Hardly  five  minutes  had 
passed  when  a  paroxysm  of  coughing  checked  Mrs. 
Cohen's  hands,  and  the  work  began  to  pile  up.  Yetta 
broke  her  thread,  and  by  the  time  she  had  mended  it 
Mrs.  Cohen  had  caught  up.  Jake,  hearing  the  stop, 
came  to  the  door,  but,  seeing  that  Yetta  was  to  blame, 
went  back  without  speaking.  Within  half  an  hour 
Yetta  had  to  break  her  thread  again.  But  Mrs. 
Cohen  was  past  the  aid  of  such  momentary  rests. 
Before  three  the  crisis  came.  She  let  go  her  work  and 
dropped  her  head  on  her  hands,  horribly  shaken  by 
sobs  and  coughs.  Yetta,  feeling  that  she  had  helped 
to  kill  the  woman,  stopped  her  machine.  Jake  rushed 
out  into  the  shop. 

"Wos  hat  da  passiert?"  he  demanded  of  Yetta, 
nervous  and  angry.  "Did  your  thread  break  again?7' 

"No."     Yetta  stood  up.     "I  stopped." 

"Stopped?"  he  repeated  in  amazement. 

"Yes.  I  stopped.  It's  a  shame.  Mrs.  Cohen  is 
sick  and  can't  keep  up." 

Jake  was  only  too  glad  to  find  some  one  else  to  vent 
his  vile  temper  upon.  He  ran  around  the  table  and 
grabbed  Mrs.  Cohen  roughly  by  the  shoulder. 


YETTA  ENLISTS  117 

" You're  fired/'  he  shrieked.  "I've  had  too  much 
from  you.  You're  the  slowest  woman  here.  Now 
you  stop  the  whole  table.  You're  fired." 

"No,  you  don't,  Mr.  Goldfogle,"  Yetta  cried,  as 
excited  as  he  was.  "You  don't  fire  her  without  you 
fire  me  too.  See?  Ain't  you  got  no  heart?  She's 
killed  herself  working  for  you.  You  ought  to  take 
care  of  her  now  she's  sick." 

"Vot  you  tink?"  he  wailed.  "Is  it  a  hospital  or  a 
factory  I'm  running?" 

"If  it's  a  slaughter-house,  Jake  Goldfogle,  I  won't 
work  in  it." 

The  altercation  had  stopped  all  the  work.  The  shop 
was  strangely  quiet.  And  Jake,  his  hope  of  success, 
his  dream  of  love,  trembling  about  his  ears,  could  hardly 
keep  back  his  tears.  Suddenly  he  found  voice  and 
turned  on  the  other  women. 

"Vot  for  do  you  stop?  Vork !  York,  or  I'll  fire 
you." 

And  then  coming  up  close  to  Yetta  he  said :  — 

"You  come  vid  me  to  my  office.  I  vant  to  talk  vid 
you." 

"Why  don't  you  say  it  here?"  she  asked  defiantly. 
"I  don't  care  who  hears  me  talk.  You  got  to  treat 
Mrs.  Cohen  right  or  I'll  quit.  The  other  girls  will 
quit  too  if  they  ain't  cowards." 

"No,  no,  no,"  he  said,  trying  to  hush  her.  "You 
come  vid  me,  Miss  Rayefsky." 

She  hesitated.  She  had  expected  him  to  rage  and 
threaten  her;  his  cringing  manner  disconcerted  her. 
Anyhow  it  would  give  Mrs.  Cohen  time  to  breathe,  so 
she  reluctantly  followed  him  into  the  dingy  little  office. 
He  carefully  closed  the  door. 


118  COMRADE  YETTA 

"I've  got  sometin'  to  tell  you.  I.  Veil  —  Yetta, 
you  be  a  good  girl  und  not  make  no  trouble  in  the  shop. 
Und  ven  de  rush  season  is  over,  Yetta  —  I'll,  yes, 
Yetta,  I  luf  you.  I'll  marry  you.  You  be  a  good  girl 
und  not  make  trouble,  Yetta,  und  I'll  marry  you." 

If  he  had  threatened  to  kill  her,  Yetta  would  not 
have  been  so  surprised.  She  was  dumbfounded.  And 
Jake,  nervous,  frightened,  amorous  Jake,  took  her 
amazed  speechlessness  for  consent.  He  thought  the 
magnificent  generosity  of  his  offer  had  overpowered  her. 

"Yes,  Yetta/'  he  drivelled  on,  "I  luv  you  already 
since  a  long  while.  I  vant  to  tell  you,  but  the  contract 
is  zu  close.  I  need  you  in  the  shop.  You're  the  best 
vorker.  It's  only  a  few  veeks  now,  Yetta.  Ve'll  be 
rich.  Rich  !  I  don't  care  if  you  ain't  got  no  money. 
Ven  I  seed  you  first,  Yetta,  I  luved  you." 

He  grabbed  one  of  her  hands  and  tried  to  kiss  her. 
The  slap  he  received  dizzied  him. 

"You  come  out  in  the  shop,  Jake  Goldfogle,"  she 
cried,  pulling  open  the  door.  "You  tell  them  what  you 
told  me.  What  do  you  think  the  pig  said  to  me?" 
she  asked  the  surprised  women.  "You  tell  them, 
Jake  Goldfogle,  or  I  will.  He  wants  me  to  marry  him 

—  after  the  rush  season.     He  loves  me  so  much  he 
wants  me  to  go  on  speeding  for  him  —  slave  driving 

—  till  after  the  rush  season.     Oh,  the  pig  !     I'd  rather 
be  hustling  on  the   street,   Jake   Goldfogle,   than  be 
married  to  a  sweat-shop  keeper." 

Jake's  temper  was  never  very  good ;  it  had  been  torn 
by  too  many  and  desperate  worries.  To  have  his 
heart's  dream  thus  publicly  scoffed  at,  robbed  him  of 
his  last  shred  of  self-control.  Giving  tongue  to  an  in 
coherent  burst  of  rage  and  filth,  he  rushed  at  Yetta. 


YETTA  ENLISTS  119 

She  thought  he  was  going  to  strike  her.  But  she  was 
too  angry  herself  to  be  afraid. 

" Don't  you  hit  me,  you  brute,"  she  screamed  at 
him,  shaking  her  own  fists  in  his  face.  "I  ain't  work 
ing  for  you  no  more,  Jake  Goldfogle.  See?  I  ain't 
one  of  your  slaves  any  more.  I'm  a  free  woman.  I'll 
have  you  arrested,  if  you  hit  me.  And  shut  your 
dirty  mouth." 

Jake  was  cowed.     His  fist  unclenched. 

"You  see  what  kind  of  a  boss  we've  been  working 
for,"  Yetta  said  to  the  other  women.  "He  ain't  a 
man.  He's  a  pig  !  Wanted  me  to  marry  him  —  after 
the  rush  season.  I've  quit  him  and  you  ought  to  quit 
too." 

"Shut  up,"  Jake  shrieked. 

"I  won't  shut  up.  See  what  youVe  done  to  Mrs. 
Cohen.  You've  killed  her,  and  now  you  want  to 
throw  her  out.  We  ought  to  strike." 

"Don't  you  talk  strike  in  my  shop,  you  — " 

"Yes.  We  ought  to  strike.  You  know  the  dirty 
deal  we're  getting.  Rotten  wages  and  speed.  It's 
because  we  ain't  got  no  union  and  don't  fight.  We 
ought  to  strike  like  the  skirt-finishers." 

"Police!  Police!"  Jake  howled,  rushing  to  the 
door.  "I'll  have  you  arrested,  you  dirty  little  — " 

"I  don't  care  if  he  does  have  me  arrested,"  Yetta 
went  on  more  quietly  after  he  had  gone.  "If  he  was 
treating  us  decent,  he  wouldn't  yell  for  the  police, 
when  somebody  says  '  strike.'  I  ain't  afraid  of  jail. 
I'm  afraid  of  staying  here  on  the  job  and  coughing  myself 
to  death.  I'm  going  to  quit,  and  you  ought  to  too." 

"You're  a  fool.  You're  making  trouble,"  the  bovine 
Mrs.  Levy  said  with  conviction. 


120  COMRADE  YETTA 

"No.  She  ain't,'7  Mrs.  Weinstein  spoke  up.  "I 
guess  my  man  belongs  to  a  union.  He's  told  me  lots 
of  times  that  us  working  people  ain't  got  no  other 
hope.  It's  the  bosses  what  make  trouble  by  cheating 
us.  I'll  strike,  if  the  rest  do." 

"I'll  strike  anyhow,"  Yetta  said.  "I  won't  never 
work  for  a  pig  like  that,  asking  me  to  marry  him  after 
the  rush  season." 

"I'll  strike  vid  you,  Yetta,"  the  girl  said  who  had 
been  to  the  ball.  "My  sister's  a  skirt-finisher.  But 
the  strike  ain't  no  good  unless  everybody  quits." 

"I'll  strike,"  another  voice  chimed  in. 

"All  right,"  Mrs.  Weinstein  said.     "We'll  all  strike." 

"It's  foolishness,"  Mrs.  Levy  protested,  rubbing 
her  trachoma-eaten  eyes. 

But  the  excitement  had  caught  the  rest  of  the  women. 
And  when  Jake  returned,  hatless  and  breathless,  with 
a  phlegmatic  Irish  policeman,  he  met  all  his  women 
coming  downstairs.  In  spite  of  his  frenzied  pleading, 
the  policeman  refused  to  arrest  them,  refused  even  to 
arrest  Yetta. 

"I'll  take  your  number.  I'll  report  you,  if  you  don't 
arrest  her.  She's  been  making  trouble." 

"Aw !  Go  on,  ye  dirty  little  Jew.  I'll  smack  your 
face,  if  ye  talk  back  to  me.  And  you  women,  move 
on.  Don't  stand  around  here  making  a  noise  or  I'll 
run  you  in." 

But  on  the  next  corner  the  group  of  women  did 
stop.  Where  should  they  go?  What  should  they 
do  next  ? 

"Nobody '11  go  back  to  work,"  Yetta  said,  "unless 
he'll  take  Mrs.  Cohen,  too,  when  she  gets  rested." 

"I  won't  never  get  rested,"  the  coughing  woman  said. 


YETTA  ENLISTS  121 

"Oh,  yes,  you  will,  sure,"  Mrs.  Weinstein  said.  But 
everybody  knew  she  was  lying. 

The  girl  whose  sister  was  a  skirt-finisher  and  who 
knew  all  about  strikes  took  down  the  names  and  ad 
dresses  of  the  twelve  women.  Mrs.  Weinstein  prom 
ised  to  look  after  Mrs.  Cohen.  And  Yetta  started 
uptown  to  the  office  of  the  Woman's  Trade  Union 
League.  And  all  the  long  walk  her  heart  was  chant 
ing  a  glad  hosanna.  She  wasn't  a  speeder  any  more. 
She  could  look  free  people  in  the  face. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE   W.    T.    U.    L. 

IT  was  near  five  in  the  afternoon  when  Yetta  reached 
the  brown-stone  front  which  held  the  offices  of  the 
Woman's  Trade  Union  League.  It  had  once  been  a 
comfortable  residence.  But  Business,  ever  crowding 
northward  on  Manhattan  Island,  had  driven  homes 
away.  The  house  seemed  dwarfed  between  two 
modern  buildings  of  twelve  and  eighteen  stories. 

In  what  had  formerly  been  the  "parlor,"  Yetta 
found  a  rather  barren,  very  businesslike  office.  Two 
stenographers  were  industriously  hammering  their 
typewriters,  but  the  chair  behind  the  big  roll-top  desk 
was  empty. 

"Hello,"  one  of  the  girls  greeted  her,  hardly  looking 
up  from  her  notes.  "What  do  you  want?" 

"I  want  to  see  Miss  Train." 

"Sit  down.  You'll  have  to  wait.  Advisory  Coun 
cil." 

She  jerked  her  head  to  one  side  to  indicate  the  double 
doors  which  in  more  aristocratic  days  had  led  to  the 
dining-room.  It  was  anything  but  a  cordial  welcome. 
To  be  sure  the  two  girls  were  "organized."  Miss 
Train  had  persuaded  them  to  form  a  union.  One 
was  president  and  the  other  was  secretary,  and  there 

122 


THE  W.  T.  U.  L.  123 

were  about  six  other  members.  They  had  done  it  to 
please  her,  just  as  they  would  have  done  anything 
to  please  her.  Nevertheless  they  felt  themselves  on  a 
very  much  higher  social  plane  than  mere  shop  girls. 

Yetta  sat  down  disconsolate.  She  had  not  expected 
to  have  to  wait.  She  did  not  appreciate  the  over 
whelming  importance  of  an  Advisory  Council.  In 
fact,  she  did  not  know  what  it  was.  And  she  did  not 
think  that  there  could  be  anything  more  important 
than  the  strike  in  her  shop.  In  a  few  minutes  her 
impatience  overcame  her  timidity. 

"Say,"  she  said,  getting  up  and  coming  over  to  the 
girl  who  had  spoken  to  her.  "You  tell  Miss  Train 
that  I'm  here.  It's  important  —  about  a  strike." 

"Humph,"  the  stenographer  snorted,  "skirt- 
finisher?" 

"No.  I  ain't  a  skirt-finisher.  I  work  bei  vests. 
It's  a  new  strike.  Miss  Train' 11  want  to  know  about 
it  right  away." 

"What  do  you  think?"  the  stenographer  asked  her 
companion.  "Can't  disturb  the  Advisory  Council, 
can  I?" 

The  two  girls  cross-questioned  Yetta  severely,  but 
at  last  gave  in  to  her  insistence.  One  of  them  knocked 
at  the  double  doors.  They  were  opened  from  the 
inside  a  couple  of  inches  and  Mabel  looked  out. 

"We've  struck,"  Yetta  cried,  rushing  towards  her. 

Mabel  turned  towards  the  occupants  of  the  inner 
room  and  asked  to  be  excused  a  moment. 

"I'm  very  busy  just  now,"  she  said  as  she  sat  down 
beside  Yetta.  "Tell me  about  it  quickly." 

The  Industrial  Conflict  is  not  logical.  At  least  it 
does  not  follow  any  laws  of  logic  known  to  the  so- 


124  COMRADE  YETTA 

called  " labor  leaders."  It  is  connected  with,  actuated 
by,  a  vague  something,  which  for  want  of  a  better 
term  we  call  "  human  nature."  And  labor  leaders  are 
just  as  uncertain  what  " human  nature"  will  do  next 
as  the  rest  of  us.  They  will  spend  patient  years  on 
end  organizing  a  trade,  collecting  bit  by  bit  a  "  strike 
fund,"  preparing  for  a  battle  which  never  comes  off  or 
miserably  fizzles  out.  In  the  midst  of  such  discourage 
ment,  an  unprepared  strike  in  an  unorganized  trade 
will  break  out  and  with  no  prospect  of  success  will 
sweep  to  an  inspiring  victory.  Mabel  had  seen  such 
surprising  things  happen  a  hundred  times. 

More  than  once,  since  her  short  talk  with  Yetta  at 
the  ball,  she  had  thought  over  the  possibility  of  or 
ganizing  the  vest-makers.  But  the  project  seemed  to 
hold  very  little  promise.  The  "  skirt-finishers "  had 
lost.  She,  with  her  hand  on  the  pulse  of  things,  knew 
it,  even  if  the  strikers  did  not.  And  here,  once  more, 
a  new  strike  had  broken  out,  just  as  another  was  col 
lapsing.  It  might  be  only  a  flash  in  the  pan,  a  quarrel 
in  one  shop.  It  might  spread.  She  listened  closely 
to  Yetta. 

Her  eyes  were  also  busy.  She  noted  the  peculiar 
charm  of  the  young  girl,  the  big  deep  eyes  with  their 
sudden  changes  from  excited  hope  to  melancholy  sad 
ness,  her  cheeks  flushed  with  the  impetuous  enthusiasm 
of  a  new  convert. 

Mabel  thought  of  the  group  of  well-to-do  women 
in  the  other  room.  She  had  small  respect  for  most 
of  them,  none  at  all  for  some.  It  would  have  been  a 
very  complicated  matter  to  analyze  the  reasons  which 
caused  these  " ladies"  to  interest  themselves  in  the 
cause  of  working  girls.  Some  few  of  them  had  similar 


THE  W.  T.  U.  L.  125 

—  if  less  forceful  —  motives  to  those  which  had  led 
Mabel  to  give  her  life  to  the  work.  Some  of  them 
liked  to  be  thought  odd,  and  found  in  labor  unions  a 
piquant  fad.  Two  were  suffragists  and  were  seriously 
interested  in  all  organizations  of  women.  There  was 
one  at  least  whose  morbid  instincts  were  tickled  by 
the  stories  of  desperate  misery  which  circulated  in  the 
League. 

Probably  all  of  them  had  been  somewhat  influenced 
to  seek  election  by  the  fact  that  Mrs.  Van  Cleave  was 
on  the  Board  —  she  might  invite  them  to  one  of  her 
functions. 

She  was  a  mystery  to  Mabel.  She  was  very  fat  and 
very  rich  and  a  leader  of  the  inner  circle  of  "  Society." 
She  attended  the  meetings  regularly,  and  never  seemed 
to  take  the  slightest  interest  in  anything.  Every 
January  first  she  mailed  a  check  for  ten  dollars.  Mabel 
had  never  succeeded  in  getting  any  other  money  from 
her.  But  her  social  prestige  was  of  unquestioned 
value  —  otherwise  she  was  absolute  dead-wood. 

Mrs.  Karner,  the  wife  of  a  millionnaire  newspaper 
owner,  was  the  only  one  of  them  all  who  really  helped 
Mabel.  She  was  an  intelligent  woman  and  rendered 
efficient  service  along  many  lines. 

It  was  a  hard  group  to  work  with.  The  sincere 
ones  were  occupied  with  many  other  activities.  It 
was  difficult  to  get  any  enthusiasm  into  them.  But 
the  League  could  not  exist  without  their  financial 
support.  Now  that  the  "  skirt-finishers"  strike  was 
ending  in  disaster,  how  could  she  keep  up  their  interest, 
how  could  she  persuade  them  further  to  open  their 
pocket-books?  Yetta's  radiant  face  gave  her  a  sug 
gestion. 


126  COMRADE  YETTA 

"Wait  a  minute,"  she  interrupted  her  in  the  middle 
of  a  sentence.  "There  are  some  other  people  who 
ought  to  hear  about  this.  Come  along." 

She  led  Yetta  through  the  double  doors  into  the 
committee-room.  It  was  one  of  Eleanor  Mead's 
achievements.  The  room  had  been  extended  to  the 
back  of  the  house.  Along  the  sides  were  piles  of  cheap 
folding  chairs.  When  they  were  put  up,  they  would 
accommodate  about  two  hundred.  By  the  windows 
in  the  back  there  was  a  large  flat-topped  table  and  ten 
easy  chairs  in  which  the  Advisory  Council  were  com 
fortably  installed.  Above  the  table  hung  a  great 
mezzatone  photograph  of  the  Rouen  statue  of  Jeanne 
d'Arc.  The  room,  all  in  brown  tones,  harmonized  with 
it  and  the  half-dozen  similar  portraits  of  famous  women. 

"Ladies,"  Mabel  said,  "this  is  Yetta  Rayefsky. 
She  has  just  come  to  tell  me  of  a  new  strike  in  her  trade 
—  vests.  We've  finished  to-day's  business.  And  if 
you  can  spare  the  time,  I  am  sure  you  will  be  interested 
in  her  story.  Begin  at  the  beginning,  Yetta,"  she 
went  on  as  the  ladies  nodded  assent,  "and  tell  us  all 
about  it." 

Yetta  was  utterly  confused.  She  had  never  seen  so 
much  fine  raiment  nor  so  many  jewels.  No  one  had 
ever  stared  at  her  through  lorgnettes  in  the  insolent 
way  that  Mrs.  Van  Cleave  did. 

"They  are  all  friends,  Yetta,"  Mabel  encouraged 
her.  "And  if  the  strike  is  to  succeed,  we  will  need  all 
the  help  we  can  get." 

Thus  prodded,  Yetta  began.  The  many  books 
which  she  had  read  to  her  father  as  a  child  had  famil 
iarized  her  with  good  English.  But  in  the  last  four 
years  she  had  fallen  into  the  mixture  of  Yiddish  and 


THE  W.  T.  U.  L.  127 

slipshod  English  which  is  the  language  of  the  sweat 
shop.  Now  she  felt  that  she  must  speak  correctly, 
and  the  search  for  words  added  to  her  self-conscious 
ness  and  ruined  the  effect  of  her  story.  Mabel  was 
just  beginning  to  regret  that  she  had  brought  her  in, 
when  in  some  sudden,  inexplicable  way  all  the  excite 
ment  of  the  last  few  days  came  over  Yetta  with  a  rush 
and  stimulated  her  as  the  wine  had  on  the  night  of  the 
ball.  She  began  to  speak  simply,  straight  out  from 
her  heart.  It  was  not  an  economic  exposition  of  the 
industrial  conflict ;  not  even  a  coherent  explanation 
of  the  strike  in  her  shop.  It  was  a  more  personal 
story.  She  wandered  off  from  her  main  subject,  told 
them  about  her  father  and  the  book-store.  She  told 
them  about  Rachel  and  Mrs.  Cohen.  She  told  them 
about  Jake  Goldfogle  and  his  offer  of  marriage.  Now 
and  then  Mabel  asked  a  question  about  the  conditions 
in  her  trade.  God  knows  they  were  bad  enough,  but 
to  Yetta  such  things  seemed  insignificant  details ;  she 
was  concerned  with  the  frightful  implications  of  poverty. 
Long  hours  and  poor  food  seemed  of  small  moment  to 
her  compared  to  the  miserable  meagreness  of  the  life 
of  the  girls.  To  be  sure  they  were  hungry,  but  more 
awful  was  the  fact  that  they  were  starving  for  sun 
light.  More  than  once  she  came  back  to  Rachel  and 
how  she  had  " wanted  to  be  good."  Suddenly  she 
stopped  and  turned  to  Mabel. 

" Ought  I  to  tell  them  about  Harry  Klein?" 
The  roomful  of  women  —  ease-loving,  worldly  women 
—  also  turned  to  Mabel  to  catch  her  answer.  They  had 
fallen  silent  under  the  spell  of  Yetta's  simple  eloquence. 
Some  of  them  Mabel  detested.  It  seemed  almost 
sacrilegious  to  let  this  unsophisticated  girl  strip  her 


128  COMRADE  YETTA 

soul  naked  before  them.  But  she  saw  that  Yetta  was 
moving  them  more  deeply  than  she  ever  could. 

"It  hasn't  anything  to  do  with  the  strike/'  she  said 
after  a  slight  hesitation.  "You  don't  need  to  tell  it 
—  if  you'd  rather  not." 

"Please  tell  us." 

It  was  Mrs.  Karner  who  had  spoken.  Yetta  had 
felt  that  she  was  the  friendliest  of  all  these  fine  ladies. 
She  had  found  encouragement  in  her  eyes  whenever 
she  had  looked  at  her.  So  taking  a  deep  breath,  she 
plunged  in. 

"You  see,  it  was  just  luck  —  if  it  hadn't  been  for 
luck,  I'd  have  gone  wrong  —  just  like  Rachel." 

She  began  with  the  night  when  she  had  watched  the 
Settlement  dance  from  her  window.  With  the  won 
derful  cleverness  of  self-forgetfulness  she  made  them 
feel  how  her  heart  had  hungered  for  a  little  happiness ; 
how,  although  she  had  wanted  very  much  to  be  good, 
she  had  reached  out  her  hands,  pleadingly,  toward 
the  dream  of  joy.  She  made  them  understand  how 
the  deadening  barrenness  of  the  sweat-shop  had  made 
it  easy  for  her  to  believe  in  Harry  Klein,  how  he  had 
come  to  her  singing  the  Song  of  Songs  —  like  a  Prince 
in  Shining  Armor  riding  forth  to  rescue  her  from  the 
Giant  Greed.  Even  the  fat  Mrs.  Van  Cleave  was 
crying  behind  her  lorgnette  when  Yetta  told  of  her 
first  supper  with  Harry. 

"You  see,"  she  ended,  "it's  mostly  against  things 
like  that  that  we  girls  strike.  We  may  think  it's  for 
higher  wages  or  shorter  hours,  but  it's  because  it's  so 
hard  for  a  poor  girl  to  be  happy." 

Mrs.  Karner  jumped  up  and  put  her  arms  around 
Yetta  and  kissed  her  and  cried  against  her  cheek. 


THE  W.  T.  U.  L.  129 

"Ladies,"  Mabel  struck  while  the  iron  was  hot, 
"  shall  we  support  this  strike  ?  Shall  we  try  to  organize 
the  vest  workers  ?" 

No  formal  motion  was  put,  but  Mrs.  Earner,  who 
was  chairman,  instructed  the  secretary  to  enter  on 
the  minutes  their  unanimous  decision  to  aid  the  vest- 
makers.  Mrs.  Van  Cleave  nodded  her  head  approv 
ingly  and  volunteered  to  head  a  sub-committee  in 
finance.  It  was  the  first  time  she  had  ever  done  any 
thing  but  sit  placidly  in  her  chair.  Then  the  meeting 
adjourned,  and  when  the  last  of  the  ladies  had  left  the 
room,  Mabel  gave  Yetta  a  great  hug. 

"Oh,  you  darling,"  she  said.  "You  even  made  Mrs. 
Van  Cleave  cry.  It  was  wonderful." 

And  then  without  any  reason  at  all,  Yetta  began  to 
sob.  Mabel  installed  her  in  one  of  the  big  chairs  and 
sat  down  at  her  feet.  "There,"  she  said,  "you  cry 
as  much  as  you  want  to.  You've  got  a  right  to  cry  a 
week  after  a  speech  like  that." 

Resting  her  head  against  Yetta's  knee  and  holding 
her  hand,  she  lit  a  cigarette  and  began  to  think 
out  the  new  campaign.  Yetta's  sobs  wore  themselves 
out  quickly,  and  they  began  to  talk.  Mabel's  grasp 
of  details,  her  unexpected  knowledge  of  the  vest  making, 
amazed  Yetta.  Mabel  knew  things  about  the  trade 
which  she  had  never  dreamed  of. 

The  two  stenographers  were  called  in.  One  was 
set  to  work  on  a  volume  of  Factory  Reports,  preparing 
a  list  of  vest  shops.  And  Mabel  instructed  the  other  one 
to  call  up  the  Forwaertz  —  the  Yiddish  Socialist  paper. 

"What's  your  address?"  she  asked  Yetta.  "I'm 
going  to  ask  Mr.  Braun  to  come  and  see  you  to-night 
and  write  up  the  strike." 


130  COMRADE  YETTA 

The  question  reminded  Yetta  of  a  new  complication. 

"I  forget/'  she  said.  "I  can't  go  home.  My 
uncle's  fierce  against  unions.  I  ain't  got  no  place. 
I'll  have  to  find  one." 

" That's  all  right ;  you  come  home  with  me  to-night," 
Mabel  reassured  her.  And  turning  to  the  stenographer, 
told  her  to  ask  Mr.  Braun  to  come  to  her  flat  for 
dinner.  She  dictated  letters  to  half  a  dozen  different 
people  telling  of  the  new  plans  and  asking  them  to 
come  to  the  League  rooms  on  the  morrow.  It  was 
nearly  seven  when  she  and  Yetta  and  the  two  stenog 
raphers  left  the  office. 

All  the  last  hour,  Harry  Klein  had  stood  impatiently 
in  the  dark  doorway,  waiting  for  Yetta  to  pass.  As  the 
last  of  the  ebb  tide  flowed  by  him,  he  went  across  the 
street  and  told  his  followers  that  there  was  nothing 
doing.  For  two  more  nights  he  marshalled  them,  but 
Yetta  did  not  pass  that  way  any  more. 

His  luck  had  changed.  It  was  not  long  before  his 
retainers  noticed  it.  In  due  time  a  new  president  was 
elected  to  the  James  B.  O'Rourke  Democratic  Club. 
And  so  he  passes  out  of  this  story. 


CHAPTER  XI 
MABEL'S  FLAT 

YETTA  had  no  clear  idea  of  what  fairy-land  should 
be  like,  but  when  she  passed  through  the  door  of 
Mabel's  flat,  it  seemed  that  she  had  entered  it. 

She  had  never  dreamed  of  such  beautiful  rooms. 
Even  a  more  sophisticated  observer  would  have  been 
impressed  with  Miss  Mead's  arrangements.  Interior 
decoration  was  her  profession,  and  she  was  more  proud 
of  her  work  in  this  humble  apartment  than  of  any 
thing  she  had  done  elsewhere.  Most  of  her  commis 
sions  were  for  people  who  were  foolishly  rich,  who  were 
more  anxious  to  have  their  rooms  appear  expensive 
than  beautiful.  There  was  nothing  in  the  apartment 
simply  because  it  had  been  high-priced.  Nothing 
pleased  Eleanor  more  than  to  tell  how  little  it  had  all 
cost.  She  could  talk  by  the  hour  on  the  absolute  lack 
of  relationship  between  pure  aesthetics  and  money. 
One  of  her  lectures  was  on  this  subject,  and  she  used 
the  apartment  as  a  demonstration  room.  But  to  Yetta 
the  forty  dollar  flat  seemed  a  miracle  of  luxury. 

The  room  which  impressed  her  most  with  its  appear 
ance  of  opulence  was  the  white  enamelled,  large-mirrored 
bath-room. 

Eleanor  herself  was  a  vision  of  loveliness.  Yetta 
had  seen  very  few  women  with  real  blonde  hair,  and 

131 


132  COMRADE  YETTA 

those  few  had  not  known  how  to  wear  it.  There  was 
a  book  she  had  seen  as  a  child  with  a  picture  in  it  like 
Eleanor,  but  she  had  not  thought  that  such  women 
walked  the  earth.  And  her  dress !  It  seemed  to  the 
little  East-sider  fit  raiment  for  a  queen.  She  could 
not  imagine  how  it  could  shine  so  unless  it  was  woven 
of  spun  gold.  But  it  was  not  so  costly  as  she  imagined. 
The  only  real  extravagance  which  Eleanor  permitted 
herself  in  her  quest  for  the  Beautiful  was  the  purchase 
of  early  daffodils. 

Mabel  got  out  one  of  her  own  shirt-waists  and 
hurried  Yetta  into  it.  While  she  was  changing  her 
own  workaday  clothes  for  a  fresh  outfit,  —  hardly  less 
gorgeous  than  Eleanor's, —  they  heard  the  maid  admit 
ting  Isadore  Braun. 

He  was  a  product  of  the  Social  Settlement  Movement. 
Even  as  a  little  boy  he  had  been  bitten  by  the  desire 
to  know.  The  poverty  of  his  family  had  forced  him 
to  go  to  work,  but  he  had  continued  his  studies  in  the 
night  classes  of  a  Settlement.  His  boyish  precocious- 
ness  had  attracted  attention,  and  some  of  the  Univer 
sity  men  of  the  Settlement,  impressed  by  his  eagerness 
to  learn,  had  helped  out  his  family  finances  so  Isadore 
could  return  to  school.  They  had  helped  him  through 
High  School  and  into  the  City  College. 

During  his  sophomore  year  Isadore  had  joined  the 
Socialist  party.  His  conversion  had  been  a  deep  and 
stormy  spiritual  experience  to  him.  He  knew  it  would 
shock  and  alienate  his  supporters.  Caution,  expediency, 
every  prudent  consideration  had  urged  him  to  postpone 
the  issue  —  at  least  till  he  had  finished  college.  But 
the  new  vision  of  life  flamed  with  an  impatient  glory. 
He  could  not  wait. 


MABEL'S  FLAT  133 

His  new  political  faith  separated  him  from  the 
friends  who  had  made  things  easy  for  him.  But  it 
brought  him  new  ones  a-plenty  who,  if  poorer,  were 
truer.  He  had  been  compelled  to  leave  college.  But 
he  had  already  developed  a  marked  talent  for  the  kind 
of  journalism  the  East  Side  appreciates,  less  "  newsy," 
but  decidedly  more  literary  than  the  output  of  the 
English  papers.  He  found  a  place  on  the  Forwaertz 
where,  for  a  bare  living  wage,  he  wrote  columns  about 
history  and  science  and  the  drama.  It  was  an  after 
noon  paper,  so  he  had  his  evenings  free  to  study.  He 
had  taken  the  night  course  in  the  New  York  Law 
School.  It  had  been  a  desperate  struggle  which  he 
could  not  have  won  through  except  for  a  talent  at 
reducing  work  to  a  routine  and  for  one  of  those  mar 
vellous  constitutions  —  like  Yetta's  —  which  seem  the 
special  heritage  of  their  race,  a  physical  and  nervous 
endurance,  which  is  probably  explained  by  agelong 
observance  of  the  strict  dietary  regulations  of  Moses. 

He  was  not  an  attractive  person  to  look  at.  His 
face  was  heavily  lined  and  lumpy.  His  short,  stocky 
body  had  been  twisted  by  much  application  to  desk 
work.  His  right  shoulder  was  noticeably  higher  than 
his  left. 

Nor  was  his  type  of  mind  attractive.  It  was  too 
utilitarian  to  admit  of  any  graces.  He  was  twenty-five 
years  old,  and,  since  the  days  of  enthusiasm  when  he 
had  become  a  Socialist,  he  had  imposed  on  himself  an 
iron  rule.  He  had  not  given  himself  a  vacation,  he 
had  not  read  any  book,  had  not  consciously  done  any 
thing  in  these  five  years,  which  did  not  seem  to  him 
useful.  With  the  same  merciless  singleness  of  purpose 
which  had  marked  Jake  Goldfogle's  struggle  to  become 


134  COMRADE  YETTA 

rich,  Isadore  Braun  had  driven  himself  in  the  acquisi 
tion  of  abilities,  which  would  make  him  a  more  forceful 
weapon  in  the  fight  for  Socialism. 

He  had  led  his  classes  in  the  Law  School.  He  had 
spurred  himself  on  to  immense  effort,  not  because  he 
wanted  to  sit  on  the  Supreme  Bench,  but  because  he 
saw  that  the  workers  were  in  sore  need  of  competent, 
sympathetic  legal  representatives.  He  believed  that 
the  Socialists  were  the  most  enlightened  element  in  the 
great  army  of  industrial  revolt.  He  held  that  they 
should  be  a  sort  of  " general  staff,"  guiding  and  advis 
ing  the  Labor  Unions  —  the  rank  and  file  of  the  army. 
His  only  idea  in  entering  the  bar  was  to  act  as  attorney 
for  the  unions.  If  he  had  been  offered  a  large  retainer 
to  settle  a  will  or  draw  up  a  business  contract,  he  would 
have  been  surprised  and  would  have  refused  on  the 
ground  that  he  was  too  busy.  He  had  volunteered  his 
services  as  legal  adviser  to  the  Woman's  Trade  Union 
League. 

He  still  drew  his  meagre  salary  from  the  Forwaertz, 
but  he  wrote  less  frequently  on  general  subjects  and 
had  specialized  on  the  labor  situation.  He  kept  to  the 
newspaper  work,  not  only  because  it  gave  him  a  small 
income,  but  even  more  because  it  gave  him  an  audi 
ence.  Almost  every  Yiddish-speaking  workman  in  the 
city  knew  his  name.  He  was  a  concise  and  forceful 
speaker,  and  now  that  he  no  longer  attended  night 
school  he  was  on  the  platform,  preaching  Socialism, 
four  or  five  nights  a  week. 

This  manner  of  life  had  had  its  inevitable  and  un 
wholesome  result.  For  years  he  had  been  so  intensely 
occupied  with  details  that  he  had  had  no  time  to  think 
broadly,  to  criticise,  and  develop  the  fundamentals  of 


MABEL'S  FLAT  135 

his  faith.  At  twenty  he  had  accepted  the  philosophy 
of  Socialism;  he  had  not  had  time  to  think  about  it 
since.  He  was  rapidly  becoming  a  narrow-minded 
fanatic.  It  was  a  strange,  but  common  paradox.  Hav 
ing  spent  five  years  in  the  fight  for  Socialism,  he  could 
not  have  given  a  more  coherent,  a  maturer  statement 
of  his  beliefs  than  at  first.  All  his  associates  held  the 
same  creed,  but  they  discussed  only  its  detailed  appli 
cation.  Like  himself  they  were  —  with  very  few  ex 
ceptions  —  slaves  to,  rather  than  masters  of,  the  Great 
Idea. 

His  only  non-Socialist  friends  were  Mabel  Train  and 
Walter  Longman.  When  he  first  took  up  the  work  of 
the  Woman's  Trade  Union  League,  he  had  had  a 
sweeping  contempt  for  " bourgeois  reformers."  Gradu 
ally  Mabel  had  forced  him  to  abandon  his  hostility 
and  at  last  to  give  her  a  high  degree  of  respect.  He 
was  unable  to  understand  her.  But  it  was  equally 
impossible  for  him  to  withhold  his  admiration  for  her 
consistency  of  purpose,  her  dogged  persistence  in  a  far 
from  pleasurable  career,  her  great  ability,  and  her 
strong,  straight  intellect.  He  knew  no  other  woman 
who  was  more  steadfast  than  Mabel.  But  why? 
What  were  her  motives  ?  She  was  not  a  Socialist. 
She  explained  casually  that  she  did  not  have  time  for 
more  than  Labor  Unions.  He  could  understand  devo 
tion  to  a  great  philosophical  principle,  but  he  could 
discover  no  coherent  system  of  thought  back  of  Mabel's 
unquestioned  devotion. 

He  was  a  frequent  visitor  at  the  flat.  But  it  never 
occurred  to  him  to  make  a  social  call.  For  Eleanor 
he  had  no  manner  of  use,  a  feeling  which  she  entirely 
reciprocated.  While  he  tried  to  pretend  to  a  polite 


136  COMRADE  YETTA 

interest  in  " interior  decoration/7  she  made  no  pre 
tence  at  all  of  caring  for  Socialism.  And  as  soon  as 
the  business,  which  had  caused  him  to  come,  was 
finished  he  found  himself  ill  at  ease,  even  with 
Mabel.  On  the  basis  of  their  common  work,  the  or 
ganization  of  labor  and  the  conduct  of  strikes,  they 
had  a  delightfully  frank  and  free  friendship.  But 
on  any  other  ground  he  felt  constraint.  He  never 
discussed  Socialism  with  her,  and  this  was  strange, 
as  he  was  an  ardent  proselyter.  Back  of  her  off 
hand  explanation  that  she  was  too  busy  to  occupy 
herself  with  the  party,  he  felt  the  existence  of  a  point 
of  view  entirely  different  from  his  own.  In  reality 
he  was  afraid  to  open  this  subject  with  her;  he  was 
afraid  of  her  brilliant  vision  and  her  incisive,  rail 
ing  style  of  argument.  He  had  gotten  out  of  the 
habit  of  discussing  the  broad  foundations  of  Socialism ; 
he  would  be  off  his  accustomed  ground.  He  told  him 
self  that  she  was  a  woman,  and  if  she  got  the  better  of 
him  in  repartee,  she  would  think  that  she  had  demolished 
Socialism. 

Through  Mabel,  he  had  met  Longman,  and  if  she 
did  not  fit  into  his  theory  of  life,  Walter  was  an  even 
greater  exception.  His  easy-going,  rather  lazy  bril 
liance  was  always  startling  Isadore  and  making  him 
angry.  Here  was  an  exceptionally  able  man,  who  was 
keenly  alive  to  the  rottenness  of  the  present  order,  but 
who  took  only  a  languid  interest  in  righting  it.  What 
a  power  he  might  be  !  Instead  he  spent  his  time  on 
the  deadest  of  dead  pasts  and  in  an  inconsequential 
way  dallied  —  " diddled,"  Isadore  called  it  —  with 
philosophy.  He  could  not  think  of  Longman's  manner 
of  life  without  raging;  it  was  such  despicable  waste, 


MABEL'S  FLAT  137 

He  ought  to  have  despised  him,  but  he  could  not  help 
liking  him.  Having  no  bond  of  common  work  with 
Longman,  as  he  had  with  Mabel,  he  found  himself 
more  often  in  his  rooms  than  in  her  flat. 

Yetta,  somewhat  abashed  by  the  glorious  clothes  of 
her  hostesses,  found  Isadore's  unkempt  appearance  a 
decided  relief.  His  hair,  black,  curly,  wiry,  looked  as 
if  it  had  not  been  brushed  for  a  decade.  The  spotless 
linen,  the  gilt  shades  of  the  candles,  the  bewildering 
assortment  of  forks  and  spoons,  the  white-aproned 
French  maid,  all  rather  dizzied  her.  It  was  indeed 
comforting  now  and  then  to  glance  up  at  the  familiar 
East  Side  face  across  the  table. 

Eleanor,  after  a  few  formal  politenesses  from  the 
head  of  the  table,  fell  silent,  and  Mabel  began  to  tell 
Isadore  about  the  new  strike.  Once  in  a  while  they 
asked  Yetta  a  question.  When  the  table  was  cleared 
and  the  maid  brought  coffee  —  tiny,  tiny  cups  of  black 
coffee  —  Eleanor  went  into  the  parlor  and  arranged 
herself  with  a  book  beside  a  green-shaded  lamp.  And 
Isadore,  taking  out  some  rough  sheets  of  copy  paper, 
began  scribbling  notes  for  the  article  which  should  tell 
the  East  Side  on  the  morrow  that  a  gigantic,  rapidly 
spreading,  and  surely  victorious  revolt  had  broken  out 
in  the  vest  trade.  Once  Yetta  protested  that  her 
shop  —  twelve  women  —  was  the  only  one  which  had 
struck.  But  they  laughed  aside  her  objection.  At 
least  it  was  necessary  to  make  it  sound  big,  perhaps  it 
would  grow.  Then  they  began  drawing  up  a  set  of 
demands  for  the  strikers  to  submit  to  their  employers. 
First  of  all  came  the  " recognition  of  the  Union,"  and 
then  a  long  list  of  shop  reforms.  About  the  only  one 
which  would  be  intelligible  to  those  not  familiar  with  the 


138  COMRADE  YETTA 

trade  was  that  for  a  higher  rate  of  pay  per  piece ;  the 
rest  involved  such  technical  considerations  as  the  regu 
lation  of  speed,  ventilation,  etc.  Yetta  wanted  them 
to  put  in  a  clause  demanding  the  reinstatement  of  Mrs. 
Cohen.  But  Mabel  explained  that  there  would  be  no 
sense  to  the  demands  unless  other  shops  joined  the 
strike,  so  they  could  not  put  in  anything  which  applied 
only  to  one. 

"But,"  Yetta  insisted,  "I  guess  there's  a  Mrs. 
Cohen  in  every  shop." 

They  argued  against  her  that  the  unions  could  not 
try  to  right  individual  wrongs,  they  could  only  hope 
to  win  conditions  which  would  stop  the  production  of 
Mrs.  Cohens.  Although  she  was  unconvinced,  Yetta 
gave  in.  Isadore  hurried  off  to  a  meeting. 

Eleanor  gave  him  a  perfunctory  good  night  without 
looking  up  from  her  book,  and  Mabel  walked  down 
the  hallway  with  him.  Yetta  felt  suddenly  forlorn. 
Eleanor  went  on  reading,  ignoring  her  existence,  and 
Mabel  lingered  to  talk  with  Isadore  at  the  door. 

When  Mabel  came  back,  Eleanor  looked  up  from  her 
book  and  spoke  querulously  in  French. 

"I  should  think  you  might  at  least  say  you  are 
sorry  for  spoiling  our  evening." 

"It  isn't  spoilt  yet,"  Mabel  replied.  "It's  only 
begun." 

"Not  spoilt  for  you,  perhaps.  You  never  think  of 
me.  You  solemnly  promised  to  keep  this  evening  free 
for  some  music.  And  at  six  your  stenographer  casually 
calls  me  up  to  say  that  there  will  be  people  for  dinner. 
You  can't  even  find  time  to  telephone  yourself." 

"Now,  Nell,  don't  be  cross.  If  you  listened  to  our 
talk,  you  must  have  seen  how  important — " 


MABEL'S  FLAT  139 

"Oh,  everything  is  more  important  than  I." 

"  We'll  have  our  music  all  right.  I'll  send  the  little 
one  to  bed." 

And  then  changing  into  English,  Mabel  told  Yetta 
that  she  must  be  very  tired  after  so  much  excitement, 
that  they  had  a  hard  day  before  them,  and  that  she  had 
best  take  a  piping-hot  bath  to  make  her  sleep  and  turn 
in  at  once.  Yetta  did  not  understand  French,  but 
from  Eleanor's  tone  she  had  guessed  the  meaning  of 
"de  trop"  She  wanted  very  much  to  stay  up  and 
talk  with  Miss  Train,  but  with  a  pang  in  her  heart, 
she  followed  her  docilely  into  a  bedroom,  watched  her 
lay  out  a  nightgown  and  bath-robe,  and  as  docilely 
followed  her  into  the  dazzling  bath-room. 

"Take  it  just  as  hot  as  you  can  stand  it,  and  then 
jump  right  into  bed,"  Mabel  said,  and  kissed  her  good 
night. 

Before  she  was  half  through  with  her  bath,  she 
began  to  hear  the  sound  of  music.  And  when  she  had 
put  on  the  nightgown  and  wrapped  herself  in  the 
bath-robe,  —  her  skin  had  never  felt  such  soft  fabrics, 
—  she  opened  the  door  noiselessly  and  stood  a  moment 
unobserved  in  the  hallway.  In  the  front  room  Mabel 
was  sitting  at  the  piano  and  Eleanor  stood  beside  her, 
with  closed  eyes,  a  violin  tucked  lovingly  under  her 
chin,  and  swayed  gently  to  the  rhythm  of  the  music. 
It  was  one  of  Chopin's  Nocturnes.  Yetta  did  not 
know  what  a  Nocturne  was;  the  best  music  she  had 
ever  heard  had  been  the  cheap  orchestras  at  the  Settle 
ment  and  at  the  Skirt-Finishers'  Ball.  Neither  Eleanor 
nor  Mabel  were  great  musicians ;  it  would  have  seemed 
a  commonplace  performance  to  most  of  us,  but  to  the 
girl  in  the  bath-robe  it  sounded  beautiful  beyond 


140  COMRADE  YETTA 

words,  the  most  wondrous  thing  of  all  the  wonderful 
new  world  she  had  so  suddenly  entered. 

She  listened  a  moment  and  then  tiptoed  down  the 
hall  to  her  bedroom.  She  carefully  closed  the  window, 
which  Mabel  had  as  carefully  opened,  left  her  door 
ajar,  so  she  could  hear  the  music,  and  climbed  in  between 
the  soft  white  sheets.  She  was  very  tired,  the  hot 
bath  had  quieted  her  nerves,  and  it  was  while  they 
were  playing  the  third  piece,  something  by  Grieg, 
that  she  fell  asleep.  Her  last  conscious  thought  was  a 
dreamy,  wistful  wonder  if  she  could  ever  become  a 
part,  have  a  real  share  in  so  gorgeous  a  life. 

For  more  than  an  hour  they  kept  at  their  music. 
The  people  who  wondered  why  two  so  different  per 
sonalities  lived  together  had  never  seen  them  as  they 
played.  Neither  of  them  was  expert  enough  to  per 
form  in  public,  but  they  both  passionately  loved  to 
make  music.  Eleanor's  ridiculous  posing,  her  queru 
lous  jealousy,  very  often  jarred  on  Mabel's  nerves. 
She  sometimes  thought  of  breaking  up  the  household. 
But  there  were  precious  moments  when  their  differ 
ences  melted  away  and  they  enjoyed  a  rare  and  perfect 
harmony.  Now  and  then  Mabel  escaped  from  her 
manifold  engagements,  and  they  went  together  to  a 
concert  or  the  Opera.  Even  more  intense  became  their 
intimacy  of  emotion  on  the  more  frequent  occasions 
when  —  as  this  evening  —  they  played  together.  Such 
moments  more  than  compensated  for  the  daily  frictions. 
To  the  jealous  Eleanor  they  meant  that  Mabel's  mind 
was  cleansed  of  all  preoccupations,  when  no  one,  no 
fancied  duty  came  between  them,  when  they  could 
forget  everything  —  everything  —  and  be  together. 
To  Mabel  such  intimacies  meant  escape  from  all  the 


MABEL'S  FLAT  141 

heart-breaking  routine  of  misery  and  struggle  which 
was  her  daily  life ;  they  were  interludes  of  unalloyed 
happiness,  white  moments  in  the  sad  business  of 
living.  Somehow  the  magic  of  the  music  soothed  and 
lulled  to  sleep  the  great  ache  of  social  consciousness. 
She  knew  no  other  way  to  win  forgetfulness  from  the 
overwhelming  melancholy  of  Life. 

"Nell,"  Mabel  said,  putting  her  arms  around 
Eleanor  when  at  last  they  were  going  to  bed,  "do 
you  want  to  be  nice  to  me  ?  Try  to  like  this  little 
Yetta.  She  interests  me.  And  I'd  like  to  have  her 
stay  here  for  a  while,  if  you  don't  mind." 

"At  least,"  Eleanor  replied,  "she's  more  decorative 
than  most  of  your  protegees. 


CHAPTER  XII 
YETTA'S  GOOD-BY 

YETTA  woke  at  her  accustomed  hour.  But  instead 
of  hearing  the  vague  murmur  of  awaking  life  about 
her,  there  was  a  strange  silence.  She  could  not  even 
hear  any  one  snoring.  She  had  a  panicky  feeling  that 
perhaps  they  had  been  murdered.  So  getting  out  of 
bed,  she  tiptoed  down  the  hall  to  Mabel's  open  door 
and  was  reassured  to  see  her  sleeping  peacefully. 
Back  in  her  own  room  she  climbed  into  bed  again. 
But  it  did  not  occur  to  her  to  go  to  sleep,  now  that  it 
was  so  light  —  lighter  than  her  old  bedroom  had  been 
at  noon.  For  a  few  minutes  she  occupied  herself 
looking  about,  studying  the  pictures  and  bibelots.  A 
narrow  strip  of  old  tapestry  on  the  wall  looked  especially 
strange  to  her ;  it  was  badly  faded,  the  picture  in  it 
was  hard  to  make  out.  It  seemed  almost  uncanny  to 
be  in  bed  after  she  was  awake,  so  she  got  up  and 
dressed,  noiselessly.  She  sat  down  by  the  window  and, 
pulling  aside  the  curtain,  looked  out,  up  the  street,  to 
Washington  Square.  Here  and  there  were  blotches  of 
faint  green;  the  early  spring  had  started  a  few  buds. 
Yetta  had  seen  very  little  green  that  was  not  painted. 
And  the  swelling  buds  of  the  little  park  seemed  to 
typify  all  the  strangenesses  of  the  new  world  which 
was  opening  before  her. 

142 


YETTA'S  GOOD-BY  143 

It  made  her  sad.  She  was  not  of  this  world.  She 
could  never  be  like  Mabel.  Her  instinctive  common 
sense  showed  her  the  great  gulf  which  separated  her 
from  the  life  of  her  new  friends. 

In  an  uncertain  way  she  was  beginning  to  form  a 
conception  of  Beauty  and  the  graciousness  of  luxury. 
Eleanor's  gown,  her  daffodils,  the  way  she  stood  when 
she  played  the  violin,  all  suggested  to  Yetta  an  idea  of 
personal  adornment  much  more  intricate  than  her 
former  ideal  of  a  hat  and  white  shoes.  The  dinner  had 
shown  her  that  eating  might  be  something  more  than 
the  mere  satisfying  of  hunger.  Mabel  had  changed 
her  street  clothes  for  a  dinner  gown.  Evidently  she 
thought  of  clothing  as  something  more  than  necessary 
covering.  Even  the  room  where  she  was  sitting  was 
more  than  a  place  to  sleep.  All  this  "moreness" 
this  surplus  over  necessity  —  this  luxury,  was  what 
separated  her  life  from  this  new  world.  It  did  not 
seem  possible  that  she  could  ever  cross  that  chasm. 

The  reverse  of  the  proposition  came  to  her  with 
equal  force.  Could  Mabel  cross?  Could  she  really 
become  a  part  of  the  world  of  work,  the  world  of 
less  ?  It  seemed  just  as  improbable.  Yetta  felt  lonely 
and  out  of  place.  An  inevitable  wave  of  resentment 
came  over  her  against  these  two  favored  women.  Was 
not  all  this  beauty  and  easy  grace  —  this  luxury  — 
what  she  and  her  kind,  Rachel  and  the  other  girls, 
were  starving  for  ?  She  felt  herself  in  the  enemy's 
country. 

There  was  a  light  knock  on  her  door,  and  Mabel, 
wrapped  in  her  dressing-gown,  came  in. 

"Oh,  you're  up  already,"  she  smiled. 

All   of   Yetta's   hostility   melted   before   her   frank 


144  COMRADE   YETTA 


and  morning  kiss.  Eleanor,  it  seemed,  never 
got  up  before  nine,  so  they  must  be  quiet.  In  a  few 
minutes  Mabel  reappeared  in  her  street  clothes,  and 
dosing  the  dining-room  door,  so  as  not  to  disturb  the 
sleeper,  they  had  their  breakfast.  This  meal,  even 
more  than  the  dinner,  amazed  Yetta,  There  were 
coffee  and  rich  cream  and  eggs  and  toast  and  marma 
lade.  She  had  known,  of  course,  that  people  dine  in 
slate,  but  that  any  one  ever  drank  his  morning  coffee 
leisurely  had  never  occurred  to  her.  As  Mabel  read 
the  newspaper,  Yetta  had  much  time  to  think,  and 
once  more  the  feeling  of  hostility  returned.  For  more 
than  an  hour  now  her  people  had  been  bent  over  the 
life-destroying  machines,  and  Mabel  sipped  her  coffee 
slowly  and  read  the  news.  Yetta  wanted  to  be  up  and 
doing. 

But  once  out  on  the  street  she  was  amazed  and 
humbled  at  the  sigjit  of  Mabel's  efficiency.  Yetta 
would  not  have  known  what  to  do  first.  Mabel  had 
the  whole  day's  work  planned  out. 

First  they  went  to  the  "girl  who  knew  all  about 
strikes"  and  from  her  got  the  addresses  of  the  other 
women  in  Jake  Goldfogle's  shop.  It  developed  that 
the  bovine  Mrs.  Levy  and  the  tell-tale  Mrs.  Levine 
had  gone  back  that  morning.  But  there  was  no  work 
for  only  two,  and  Jake  had  sent  them  home  with  a 
promise  to  let  them  know  as  soon  as  he  began  again. 
He  expected  to  start  the  next  morning,  he  had  told 
them.  To  Mrs.  Levine  he  had  given  a  dollar  and 
whispered  instructions  to  join  the  strikers  and  keep 
him  informed. 

The  minute  Mabel  saw  Mrs.  Cohen  she  hurried  out  ] 
to  a  drug-store  and  called  up  Dr.  liebovitz.     "It  will 


YETTA'S  GOOD-BY  145 

have  to  be  a  sanitarium,"  Yetta  overheard  her  say. 
<;And  at  that  I'm  afraid  it's  too  late.  Whatever  is 
necessary  put  on  my  account."  Then  Mabel  arranged 
that  the  Cohen  babies  should  be  boarded  by  two  of 
the  poorest  strikers  and  so  out  of  her  own  pocket 
assured  a  little  income  to  these  families.  Above  all, 
Yetta  wondered  at  Mabel's  ability  to  spread  confidence. 
Most  of  the  women  were  helpless  when  they  arrived, 
were  hoping  that  Jake  would  forgive  them  and  take 
them  back.  With  a  few  words  Mabel  had  banished  all 
doubt.  Ten  of  the  dozen  women  —  the  exceptions 
were  the  bovine  Mrs.  Levy  and  Mrs.  Levine,  the  spy 
—  were  soon  convinced  that  victory  was  assured.  And 
all  except  Mrs.  Levy  promised  to  come  up  to  the 
Woman's  Trade  Union  League  at  four  o'clock  and 
organize. 

This  attended  to,  Mabel,  with  Yetta  at  her  heels, 
jumped  into  an  uptown  car,  and  hurried  to  the  office 
of  the  Central  Federated  Union  to  ask  for  a  charter 
for  the  new  union.  ^Ir.  Casey,  the  secretary,  was  a 
hale  and  hearty  Irishman  of  near  forty.  For  twenty 
years  he  had  been  an  expert  typesetter,  and  he  never 
talked  with  any  one  twenty  minutes  without  telling 
how  he  had  set  up  some  of  the  Standard  Dictionary  — 
"the  most  conipli-cated  page  iver  printed." 

"Gawd,"  he  remarked  at  sight  of  Mabel,  "here 
comes  some  more  trouble.  Can't  ye  give  a  body  any 
peace.  !Miss  Train?  Ye  know  there  be  two  or  three 
men  in  the  world  besides  yer  blessed  women." 

The  other  men  in  the  room  got  up  and  offered  their 
chairs.  Once  more  Yetta  was  amazed  at  the  ease  with 
which  Mabel  stated  her  case.  With  her  straightforward 
way  of  looking  at  things,  she  had  come  to  know  and 


146  COMRADE  YETTA 

understand  these  men.  She  knew  the  personal  history 
of  most  of  them,  their  carefully  hidden  virtues  as  well 
as  their  vices.  And  whether  she  knew  them  to  be 
" grafters"  or  " straight"  she  had  a  knack  of  winning 
her  point. 

"Sure,"  Casey  said.  "You  can  have  the  charter. 
That  ain't  no  trouble.  But  don't  ask  me  nothing  else 
now.  The  Devil  himself  won't  be  no  more  busy  on 
the  Resurrection  Day  than  I  be." 

11  We're  all  busy,"  Mabel  replied.  "And  I  really 
want  you  to  come  round  at  four  and  help  them  or 
ganize." 

Casey  waved  his  hands  and  pounded  the  table  and 
swore  —  occasionally  asking  pardon  for  his  "damned 
profanity"  -but  Mabel  hung  on.  She  had  already 
won  the  other  men  in  the  room,  and  they  laughingly 
urged  him  to  go. 

Having  gained  his  promise  to  come,  Mabel  did  not 
waste  a  minute  more  of  his  time.  She  rushed  Yetta 
over  to  the  Woman's  Trade  Union  League  and  plunged 
into  her  morning's  correspondence. 

All  those  things  which  had  seemed  to  Yetta  of  over 
whelming  importance  began  to  look  very  small.  There 
were  some  of  the  "skirt-finishers"  in  the  office.  Their 
strike  involved  several  hundred  women.  There  were 
only  twelve  in  Goldf ogle's  shop.  While  Mabel  was 
busy  at  other  things  Yetta  picked  up  a  copy  of  The 
American  Federationist,  the  monthly  organ  of  the  na 
tional  federation  of  labor  unions.  How  infinitesimal 
was  her  part  in  this  great  industrial  conflict !  She  read 
of  thousands  of  miners  striking  in  the  anthracite  fields, 
of  a  hundred  woollen  mills  which  had  locked  out  their 
operatives.  The  street-car  men  were  out  in  a  Western 


YETTA'S  GOOD-BY  147 

city.  A  strike  referendum  was  being  taken  by  the 
printers  of  half  a  dozen  Southern  States.  A  great 
revolt  had  tied  up  the  Chicago  stock-yards.  And  here 
in  New  York  there  were  five  different  strikes  in  progress. 
At  one  moment  her  pride  swelled  at  the  thought  that 
she  was  a  part  of  this  vast  army  of  workers  who  were 
fighting  for  a  larger  share  of  sunshine  and  Freedom. 
At  the  next  it  was  borne  in  on  her  with  a  rush  how  in 
significant  was  the  case  of  the  vest-makers. 

She  had  read  almost  every  word  in  that  month's 
issue  of  The  Federationist  before  Mabel  called  her  and 
they  went  downstairs  to  the  working-girls'  restaurant 
for  lunch.  They  found  an  empty  table,  and  Yettahad 
just  commenced  on  her  long  list  of  questions,  when  two 
excited  "  skirt-finishers "  came  in,  and  seeing  Mabel, 
rushed  up  to  their  table.  Once  more  Yetta  felt  her 
self  pushed  back  into  a  second  place.  That  morning 
the  strike  had  reached  its  crisis,  the  women  of  two 
shops  had  gone  back  to  work  on  a  compromise  which 
ignored  the  union ;  a  general  stampede  was  imminent. 

About  two  o'clock,  the  women  of  Goldf ogle's  shop 
began  to  appear,  and  sharp  at  four,  Mabel  tore  herself 
away  from  the  "  skirt-finishers "  and  came  into  the 
back  room  where  the  vest-makers  were  assembled. 
The  Forwaertz  had  come  off  the  press  an  hour  before, 
and  the  women  who  could  read  Yiddish  had  read  aloud 
Braun's  glowing  account  of  their  exploits.  It  had 
given  them  a  new  sense  of  importance,  the  feeling  that 
there  was  sympathy  and  power  back  of  them.  And 
this  feeling  was  strengthened  by  Mr.  Casey's  jovial 
and  inspiring  speech.  When  they  had  elected  officers, 
-Mrs.  Weinstein,  president;  "the  girl  who  knew 
all  about  unions,"  treasurer,  and  Yetta,  secretary 


148  COMRADE  YETTA 

and  business  agent,  —  he  handed  them  over  a  charter 
printed  in  three  colors  which  seemed  to  them  a  sort  of 
magic  promise  of  victory.  They  agreed  as  a  matter  of 
course  on  the  set  of  demands  which  Braun  had  already 
printed  in  the  Forwaertz. 

Mabel  pulled  them  down  from  their  enthusiasm  to 
talk  details.  She  explained  that  their  one  hope  of 
success  lay  in  persuading  the  other  vest  shops  to  join 
the  strike.  Alone  they  were  helpless.  Each  one  of 
them  was  to  think  of  all  the  vest  workers  she  knew  and 
persuade  them  to  start  a  strike  in  their  shop.  She  read 
the  list  of  vest  shops  and  checked  off  every  one  where 
some  of  the  women  had  acquaintances.  Then  she  gave 
them  great  sheaves  of  the  Forwaertz  and  assigned  them 
two  by  two  to  the  principal  vest  shops.  They  were  to 
stand  at  the  door  and  distribute  papers  to  every  one 
who  came  out.  In  the  evening  they  were  to  call  on 
their  friends  in  the  trade  and  be  on  the  job  again  in  the 
morning  with  copies  of  the  Forwaertz  at  other  factory 
doors.  She  and  Yetta,  their  business  agent,  would 
go  down  and  interview  Goldfogle.  Of  course  he  would 
not  give  in  at  once,  but  it  was  best  to  show  him  they 
were  not  afraid.  And  then  with  some  words  of  en 
couragement  about  how  the  Forwaertz  was  helping 
them,  and  the  Central  Federated  Union  and  the 
Socialists,  and  of  course  the  Woman's  Trade  Union 
League,  she  dismissed  them. 

Without  Mabel  beside  her,  Yetta  would  hardly  have 
found  the  courage  to  perform  her  first  duty  as  busi 
ness  agent  of  the  union.  Some  of  the  old  terror  of  a 
boss's  arbitrary  power  still  clung  about  Jake  Gold 
fogle.  In  a  moment  of  excitement  she  had  dared  to 
defy  him.  But  it  was  a  different  thing  to  seek  an  inter- 


YETTA'S  GOOD-BY  149 

view  with  him  in  cold  blood.  But  to  Mabel  it  was  all 
in  the  day's  work.  And  she  did  most  of  the  talking. 

Jake  received  them  nervously.  He  could  not,  like 
the  big  employers,  afford  to  sit  back  cynically  and 
wait  for  his  workers  to  starve.  A  week's  tie-up  meant 
certain  ruin  for  him,  and  with  equal  certainty  it  meant 
ruin  for  him  to  grant  his  women  anything  like  decent 
conditions.  Sorely  exploited  by  bigger  capitalists,  his 
one  hope  of  success  lay  in  a  miracle  of  more  cruel  ex 
ploitation.  He  had  been  busy  all  day  with  employ 
ment  agencies.  They  could  furnish  him  with  plenty 
of  raw  hands,  but  he  needed  skilled  labor.  It  would 
be  much  better  if  he  could  get  his  old  force  back. 
And  so  he  greeted  them  with  some  decency.  But 
the  sight  of  Mabel,  this  unknown  businesslike 
American  woman,  disconcerted  him.  He  had  expected 
to  have  dealings  only  with  his  employees.  He  saw  at 
once  that  he  could  not  fool  nor  browbeat  this  stranger. 

He  hardly  listened  to  what  she  said,  but  grabbed  at 
the  typewritten  sheet  of  "  demands."  Before  he  was 
halfway  through,  all  hope  vanished. 

' '  Vot  you  tink  ?  "  he  wailed.  ' '  Am  I  a  millionnaire  ? 
How  you  expect  me  to  make  my  contract  ?" 

"We  don't  expect  you  to  make  your  contract,  Mr. 
Goldfogle,"  Mabel  replied  calmly.  "We  expect  you 
not  to  take  any  contract  that  you  can't  fill  decently. 
You  don't  care  how  your  workpeople  live  on  the 
wages  you  give,  and  we  don't  care  for  your  contract. 
If  you  can  give  your  people  fair  conditions,  they'll  be  back 
at  work  in  the  morning.  If  you  can't,  it's  a  strike." 

"Go  avay !  Get  out,"  he  cried,  jumping  up.  "To 
morrow  I  vill  start  with  new  hands.  I'll  never  take 
none  of  the  old  ones  back." 


150  COMRADE  YETTA 

Mabel  smiled  at  him  undismayed. 

"Scabs,"  she  said,  "will  break  your  machines.  It 
will  be  cheaper  to  keep  shut  than  to  work  with  green 
horns." 

Jake  knew  that  this  was  only  too  true.  But  he 
thought  that  a  bold  attitude  might  scare  his  old  em 
ployees  into  coming  back. 

" You  tink  so  ?     Veil.     I'll  show  you.     Get  out !" 

It  was  getting  towards  closing  time,  so  Mabel  and 
Yetta,  with  arms  full  of  the  afternoon's  Forwaertz, 
stationed  themselves  before  one  of  the  big  vest  shops 
and  handed  out  copies  to  every  one  who  would  take 
one,  talked  to  all  who  would  listen.  They  had  supper 
in  an  East  Side  restaurant  and  then  went  out  again 
to  call  on  some  vest-makers  whose  addresses  they 
knew. 

Once,  as  they  were  hurrying  along  the  street,  Yetta 
suddenly  stopped. 

"I  forgot,"  she  said.  "I've  got  to  go  to  my  aunt's 
and  get  some  things." 

" That's  so,"  Mabel  said.  "They  must  be  worrying 
about  you.  -  You  tell  them  you  are  going  to  live  with 
me  for  a  while." 

"No,"  Yetta  said.  "It  don't  matter  what  I  tell 
them;  they'll  think  I've  gone  wrong.  But  there  are 
some  things  I  want  to  get  before  they  sell  them." 

They  were  not  very  far  from  her  doorway,  and  when 
they  got  there,  Mabel  asked  if  she  should  come  up. 

"No,"  Yetta  said,  "you  wait.  It  won't  take  me  a 
minute." 

She  did  not  want  her  new  friend  to  see  the  place 
where  she  had  lived.  Her  uncle  might  be  at  home  and 
drunk.  But  when  she  reached  the  door  of  the  Gold- 


YETTA'S  GOOD-BY  151 

stein  flat,  her  heart  suddenly  failed  her.  Perhaps  he 
was  home,  perhaps  he  would  curse  her  the  way  he  had 
Rachel,  perhaps  he  would  strike  her.  If  it  had  been 
only  her  few  clothes,  the  new  hat  and  the  white  shoes, 
she  would  have  slunk  downstairs  afraid.  But  there 
were  the  three  volumes  of  Les  Miser ables.  So  she 
went  in. 

Only  her  aunt  and  her  cousin  Rosa  were  in  the  room. 

"I've  come  to  get  my  things,"  she  said,  not  wishing 
to  give  them  time  to  formulate  any  accusations. 
"There's  a  strike  in  my  shop.  I  won't  be  earning  any 
money  now  for  a  while,  so  you  wouldn't  want  me  here. 
I'm  going  to  live  with  a  friend." 

She  went  into  the  bedroom  and  began  wrapping  up 
the  books  and  shoes  in  her  extra  shirt-waist  and  skirt. 
Rosa  stood  in  the  doorway  and  watched  her. 

"Who's  your  friend  ?"   she  asked. 

"Her  name's  Miss  Train." 

"Oh.     It's  a  woman,  is  it?"  Rosa  sneered. 

Yetta  flushed  angrily  but  held  her  tongue,  and  when 
she  had  gathered  together  her  meagre  belongings,  she 
looked  once  more  about  the  dismal  bedroom  and 
came  out  into  the  kitchen  where  Mrs.  Goldstein  was 
sitting  in  silence,  sewing  away  at  a  frayed  underskirt 
of  Rosa's. 

A  sudden  tenderness  came  to  Yetta  for  this  hard  old 
woman  who  had  mistreated  her. 

"Good-by,  Aunt  Martha,"  she  said. 

For  a  moment  she  stitched  on  without  apparently 
noticing  her  niece's  presence.  And  then  she  spoke  to 
Rosa. 

"It  isn't  so  bad,"  she  said,  "as  when  Rachel  went. 
She  was  my  own  daughter." 


152  COMRADE  YETTA 

"But  I'm  not  going  where  Rachel  did,"  Yetta  pro 
tested.  The  old  woman  did  not  reply. 

"Auntie,"  Yetta  went  on,  "I  ain't  going  wrong.  If 
you  ever  want  to  know  about  me,  or  if  you  ever  need 
anything,  you  ask  at  the  Woman's  Trade  Union  League. 
Here.  I'll  write  down  the  address.  They'll  know 
where  to  find  me." 

She  tore  off  a  piece  of  the  paper  from  her  bundle  and 
scribbled  the  address.  As  her  aunt  was  not  looking 
up,  she  left  it  on  the  table. 

"Good-by,  Rosa,"  she  said.  "Good-by,  Aunt 
Martha." 

Out  in  the  hall  she  felt  faint  and  dizzy.  She  had 
not  loved  the  place  nor  its  inmates.  Why  did  it 
hurt  to  go  ?  She  leaned  against  the  wall  for  a  moment 
to  regain  command  of  herself.  Her  little  glimpse  into 
the  new  world  had  not  given  her  the  feeling  that  she 
would  ever  be  at  home  there.  Even  Columbus  had 
misgivings  about  his  enterprise  into  the  unknown  sea. 
But  presently  she  felt  the  sharp  corner  of  Les  Miser- 
ables  digging  into  her  side.  She  had  been  hugging  her 
little  bundle  as  if  it  had  been  a  life-preserver.  And  she 
found  courage  to  go  on  down  the  dark  stairs  and  to 
meet  Mabel  and  the  New  Life  with  something  of  a 
smile. 


BOOK  III 
CHAPTER  XIII 

THE    STRIKE 

IT  was  near  midnight  when  Mabel  and  Yetta  at  last 
turned  homeward.  They  had  talked  to  vest  workers 
from  a  dozen  shops.  The  article  in  the  Forwaertz  had 
been  a  stirring  one,  and  probably  ninety  per  cent  of  the 
trade  had  heard  of  the  outbreak  in  Goldfogle's  shop 
and  Braun's  prophecy  of  large  consequences.  Yetta 
could  not  see  that  much  had  been  accomplished,  but 
Mabel,  more  accustomed  to  judging  such  things,  was 
jubilant. 

"  Yetta,  dear,"  she  said,  as  she  kissed  her  good 
night,  " there's  a  beautiful  French  song  called  'Qa  ira' 
—  which  being  interpreted  means,  ( There'll  be  some 
thing  doing'  !" 

All  day  long  the  conviction  had  grown  on  her  that 
there  was  promise  of  big  development  to  the  insig 
nificant  quarrel  between  Yetta  and  her  boss.  More 
often  than  not  strikes  break  out  at  the  most  inopportune 
times  for  the  workers.  Sometimes  a  sudden  provoca 
tion  will  drive  the  men  into  a  premature  revolt.  Again 
there  will  be  rumbles  of  trouble  for  a  long  time  before 
the  crisis,  and  when  the  men  walk  out,  they  find  the 

153 


154  COMRADE  YETTA 

bosses  have  had  ample  time  to  make  provision  for  the 
fight.  But  a  careful  study  of  the  vest-making  industry 
could  not  have  discovered  a  more  favorable  moment. 
The  rush  season  was  just  drawing  to  a  close.  On  the 
one  hand,  the  bosses  were  straining  every  nerve  to 
finish  their  contracts  on  time.  On  the  other  hand, 
many  of  the  workers  would  be  laid  off  anyhow  when 
the  rush  was  over.  By  striking,  the  less  skilled,  poorest 
paid  workers  risked  only  a  few  weeks'  pay.  And  surely 
they  had  enough  cause  to  revolt.  All  those  to  whom 
she  had  talked  had  told  of  intolerable  speed,  pitiful 
pay,  and  arbitrary  fines,  indecent  conditions.  There 
was  good  reason  to  hope  that  the  whole  trade  would 
become  involved.  And  so  at  bedtime  she  sang  the 
uQa  ira"  to  Yetta. 

Her  forecast  proved  true.  Before  two  o'clock  every 
one  knew  that  the  strike  had  " caught."  Half  a  dozen 
shops,  including  one  of  the  biggest,  walked  out  during 
the  morning.  And  after  the  noon  hour  not  a  quarter 
of  the  vest-makers  were  at  work. 

While  it  might  have  been  possible  for  Jake  Goldfogle 
to  find  twelve  skilled  workers  for  his  small  shop,  it  was 
not  possible  to  find  enough  for  the  whole  trade  quickly. 
It  settled  down  into  an  endurance  fight.  Both  sides 
"  organized."  The  strikers  rented  a  hall  in  the  sweat 
shop  district  for  headquarters  and  a  committee  sat 
there  en  permanence,  making  out  union  cards  for  the 
strikers,  and  a  card  catalogue  of  their  names  and  ad 
dresses,  arranging  for  the  distribution  in  "strike  bene 
fits"  of  all  the  money  that  could  be  raised.  In  this 
detail  work,  of  immense  importance  to  the  successful 
conduct  of  a  strike,  Mabel  was  a  tower  of  strength. 
She  had  been  through  it  all  a  hundred  times  before,  and 


THE  STRIKE  155 

she  never  got  flurried.  Everything  seemed  like  a 
chaos,  but  through  it  her  cool-headed  generalship 
kept  an  effective  order. 

In  a  Broadway  office  the  bosses  organized  "The 
Association  of  Vest  Manufacturers."  Their  head 
quarters  were  less  noisy  than  those  of  the  Union.  But 
quiet  does  not  always  mean  a  higher  standard  of  ethics. 
As  the  Woman's  Trade  Union  League  was  helping  the 
strikers,  so  trained  men  were  lent  to  the  bosses  by  the 
Employers'  Association.  In  a  few  days  skilled  vest 
makers  from  other  cities  began  to  flow  into  New  York. 
Some  of  the  shops  were  able  to  begin  work  again  at 
about  half  their  normal  capacity.  The  press  agents 
of  the  Association  of  Vest  Manufacturers  sent  out 
announcements  to  the  newspapers  that  the  strike  was 
over. 

The  Union  retaliated  by  a  campaign  of  " picketing." 
Isadore  Braun  took  this  work  in  hand.  He  marshalled 
the  volunteer  " pickets"  every  morning,  assigned  them 
to  their  posts,  and  carefully  explained  to  them  their 
legal  rights.  They  were  free  to  stand  anywhere  on  the 
street  and  to  talk  to  any  one  who  would  listen,  so  long 
as  they  did  not  attract  a  crowd  which  impeded  traffic. 
They  must  not  detain  any  one  by  force,  nor  threaten 
violence,  nor  use  insulting  language. 

Recently  a  justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  New     . 
York  has  handed  down  a  decision  that  "  peaceful  pick-  v 
eting"  is  a  contradiction  in  terms.     From  his  point  of 
view  all  picketing  is  inherently  violent.     As  a  legal 
maxim  it  is  idiotic.     The  great  majority  of  labor  pickets 
are  peaceful.     But  in  any  large  and  long-continued 
industrial  conflict  gome  of  the  strikers  are  starving, 
many  have  hungry  children  at  home.     They  cannot  be 


156  COMRADE   YETTA 

expected  to  love  the  "  scabs/  'who  are  taking  their  jobs. 
And  it  is  desperately  hard  for  the  leaders  of  a  strike 
—  no  matter  how  sincerely  they  try  —  to  prevent 
sporadic  acts  of  violence.  Braun,  himself  a  lawyer  and 
a  Socialist,  was  a  firm  believer  in  legality.  Again  and 
again  he  impressed  on  the  strikers  the  urgent  desir 
ability  of  keeping  within  the  letter  of  the  law. 

The  first  day  Mabel  and  Yetta  picketed  together. 
They  stood  on  the  sidewalk  before  the  largest  of  the 
vest  shops  and  tried  to  talk  to  every  one  who  went  in. 
Mabel  did  most  of  it.  She  used  the  old,  time-worn 
arguments  of  the  unionists.  The  only  chance  for  the 
workers  was  in  standing  together.  If  the  scabs  took  the 
strikers'  jobs,  they  were  helping  the  boss  more  than 
themselves.  After  a  strike  is  settled  the  bosses  always 
fire  the  scabs  and  take  back  their  old  force.  If  they 
did  get  steady  work  sooner  or  later,  somebody  would 
scab  on  them.  If  they  joined  the  union  they  would 
get  enough  strike  benefits  to  live  on,  and  with  a  strong 
organization  the  trade  would  be  a  good  one.  And 
after  all  it  is  dirty  business  stealing  jobs  from  your 
brother  workers.  Most  of  the  scabs  hurriedly  passed 
them,  a  few  listened  sullenly,  one  or  two  replied  with 
insults.  To  an  outsider,  picketing  looks  hopeless. 
You  very  rarely  see  any  one  quit  work.  But  long  ex 
perience  has  taught  the  unions  that  it  does  pay.  It 
is  not  so  much  the  rare  cases  where  a  dozen  scabs  stop 
at  once  as  the  regular  drain  of  those  who  are  ashamed  to 
face  the  pickets  and  who  do  not  come  back  to  work 
again. 

Mabel  was  too  busy  to  picket  very  often.  She  had 
her  hands  full  trying  to  save  what  she  could  out  of  the 
wreckage  of  the  skirt-finishers'  strike.  And  there 


THE  STRIKE  157 

were  a  thousand  and  one  things  to  do  for  the  vest- 
makers,  arranging  meetings,  trying  to  interest  the 
newspapers,  spurring  on  the  Advisory  Council  to  raise 
money.  They  had  collected  a  good  deal,  but  the 
poverty  of  the  vest-makers  was  appalling;  " strike  bene 
fits"  kept  the  treasury  always  empty.  She  had  to  see 
to  replenishing  it  daily.  Yetta,  however,  was  on  picket 
duty  every  day. 

Gradually  it  became  evident  that  the  " picket"  was 
successful.  Most  of  the  imported  vest-makers,  the 
skilled  operatives,  had  joined  the  union.  Only  a  few 
of  the  shops  were  running  at  all  and  at  great  expense 
on  account  of  the  uneconomy  of  raw  hands.  The 
smaller  bosses  were  going  into  bankruptcy.  Jake 
Goldfogle  had  been  the  first  to  fall.  Five  days  had 
cleaned  him  out.  The  next  day  two  more  went  under. 
Credit  was  beginning  to  tighten  for  even  the  biggest 
bosses. 

The  Association  of  Vest  Manufacturers  saw  that  it 
was  necessary  to  break  the  picket  at  any  cost.  There 
were  a  number  of  secret  conferences  with  city  politicians. 
The  police  magistrate  who  was  sitting  at  Essex  Market 
Court  was  transferred  to  an  uptown  jurisdiction,  and 
his  place  was  taken  by  a  magistrate  named  Cornett, 
notorious  for  his  outspoken  hostility  to  unionism. 
The  police  also  got  their  orders. 

Busy  days  began  for  Isadore  Braun.  Pickets  were 
arrested  on  all  sides.  At  first  he  seemed  to  get  the  bet 
ter  of  the  legal  battle  in  the  dingy  Essex  Market  Court 
house.  He  had  the  law  on  his  side,  and  a  forceful  way 
of  expressing  it.  The  early  batches  of  pickets  were 
discharged  with  a  warning.  But  in  a  few  days  the 
police  got  the  hang  of  the  kind  of  testimony  which  was 


158  COMRADE  YETTA 

expected  of  them.  The  court  began  to  impose  fines, 
which  of  course  meant  imprisonment,  as  the  girls  had 
no  money. 

It  is  an  educational  maxim  of  Froebel  that  we  learn 
by  doing.  Like  most  concise  sayings,  it  is  not  entirely 
true.  Yetta,  for  instance,  had  been  making  vests  for 
four  years,  but  she  learned  more  about  vest-making 
in  the  first  four  weeks  of  the  strike  than  she  had  in  her 
years  of  labor. 

She  began  to  realize  that  her  " trade"  was  more  than 
a  routine  of  flying  fingers.  Braun  at  one  of  the  meet 
ings  had  traced  out  the  complicated  process  of  industry. 
Outside  of  her  shop  there  had  been  men  who  were 
" cutters,"  men  who  prepared  the  pieces  of  cloth  on 
which  she  worked.  Back  of  them  were  the  people 
who  wove  the  cloth  and  spun  the  yarn,  and  further  back 
still  were  the  shepherds  who  grew  the  sheep  and  clipped 
the  wool.  And  when  the  vests  had  left  her  shop,  they 
had  gone  to  "  finishers."  From  them  to  dealers  who 
were  buying  coats  and  trousers  of  the  same  cloth,  and 
at  last  the  complete  suits  were  sold  to  wearers  by  the 
retailer.  And  all  these  thousands  of  people,  who  were 
her  co-workers,  had  to  eat.  Some  one  had  to  bake  their 
bread.  The  bakers  were  really  part  of  the  vest  trade. 
And  so  were  the  cobblers  who  made  shoes  for  the 
workers,  and  the  coal  miners  who  tore  fuel  for  them  from 
the  bowels  of  the  earth,  and  the  steel  workers  who  made 
their  machines  and  their  needles.  It  was  hard  to 
think  of  any  worker  who  did  not  in  some  way  contrib 
ute  to  the  making  of  vests. 

Braun  had  said  that  all  the  people  of  the  process  were 
equally  exploited  by  the  same  unjust  system.  They 
were  all  " wage-slaves."  And  in  her  daily  intercourse 


THE  STRIKE  159 

with  the  strikers,  sometimes  on  picket  duty,  sometimes 
at  meetings,  sometimes  at  headquarters  attending  to 
the  clerical  work  of  distributing  "  benefits,"  she  came 
to  realize  as  she  never  could  have  done  from  her  own 
experience  alone,  what  "  wage-slavery "  means.  The 
tragedy  of  Mrs.  Cohen's  life  was  being  repeated  on 
every  side. 

She  had  never  made  the  acquaintance  of  hunger  — 
the  great  Slave  Driver  —  before.  And  even  now,  she 
only  saw  it.  She  at  least  got  a  good  breakfast  at 
Mabel's  flat.  And  sometimes  she  got  a  lunch  or  supper. 
Mabel,  in  her  immense  preoccupation  with  the  details 
of  the  strike,  did  not  realize  how  often  Yetta  went 
through  the  day  on  the  one  meal.  But  the  flat  was 
twenty  minutes'  walk  from  the  strike  headquarters. 
Yetta  had  no  money  for  car  fare  and  could  rarely  spend 
the  time  to  walk  there  for  lunch  or  dinner.  When  there 
were  meetings  in  the  evening  and  she  walked  home  with 
Mabel  and  Longman,  they  generally  had  a  cold  supper. 
But  she  was  of  course  earning  no  wages  and  had  taken 
nothing  from  the  Goldstein  flat  which  she  could  pawn. 
The  need  of  the  other  strikers  was  so  much  more  ap 
palling  than  her  own  that  she  could  not  find  heart  to 
ask  for  "  strike  benefits." 

Mabel,  having  at  once  realized  Yetta's  remarkable 
power  of  appeal,  was  carefully  engineering  the  lime 
light.  With  disconcerting  frequency  Yetta  found  her 
self  in  its  glare.  The  half-dozen  newspaper  men  who 
had  tried  to  get  a  story  out  of  this  sweat-shop  revolt 
had  been  steered  up  to  Yetta.  And  they  had  all  sent 
around  their  staff  photographers  to  get  her  picture. 
The  papers  with  a  large  circulation  among  the  work 
ing  classes  had  made  her  face  familiar  to  millions. 


160  COMRADE  YETTA 

One  of  them  had  the  enterprise  to  get  a  snapshot  of 
her,  arguing  with  a  scab,  before  the  Sure-fit  Vest  Com 
pany.  Even  the  man  who  signed  himself  ' '  The  Amused 
Onlooker"  in  the  Evening  Standard,  wrote  a  psycholog 
ical  sketch  of  this  East  Side  firebrand.  His  tone  was 
railing  as  usual,  but  he  tried  to  be  complimentary  to 
wards  the  close  by  comparing  her  to  Jeanne  D'Arc. 

Whenever  there  was  a  chance,  Mabel  pushed  Yetta 
on  to  the  platform.  The  various  women  of  the  Advisory 
Council  arranged  afternoon  teas  for  her  to  address. 
To  Yetta  such  begging  speeches  were  much  more 
unpleasant  work  than  picketing.  But  it  was  not  hard 
for  her  to  talk  to  these  small  gatherings.  She  spoke 
to  them  very  simply.  She  did  not'  again  tell  her  own 
story  —  in  the  rush  of  events  she  had  almost  forgotten 
it.  Every  day  brought  to  her  notice  new  and  more 
bitter  tragedies.  On  the  whole  the  money  raised  was 
not  much  —  ten,  fifteen,  sometimes  twenty-five  dollars. 
But  every  cent  was  needed.  Mabel,  from  much  ex 
perience  of  her  own  in  similar  circumstances,  knew  that 
Yetta  was  surprisingly  successful.  But  there  was 
hardly  ever  a  woman  present  at  these  uptown  teas 
whose  cheapest  ring  was  not  worth  many  times  the 
amount  collected.  Yetta,  seeing  the  jewels  and  know 
ing  the  intense  need  of  her  people,  counted  over  the 
few  dollars  and  thought  herself  a  failure. 

But  if  these  excursions  into  polite  society  did  not 
bring  the  monetary  returns  for  which  she  wished,  they 
at  least  made  Yetta's  face,  her  great  sad  eyes,  and  gentle 
voice,  familiar  to  many  women  of  social  prominence  — 
a  result  which  was  to  bear  fruit  in  the  future. 

It  also  cured  her  of  the  envy  which  had  cast  a  shadow 
of  bitterness  over  her  first  morning  in  Mabel's  apart- 


THE  STRIKE  161 

ment.  She  came  to  realize  even  more  clearly  the 
gulf  which  separated  her  people  from  the  world  of 
luxury.  She  no  longer  wanted  to  cross  the  gulf.  The 
strange  country  into  which  she  got  these  occasional 
glimpses  seemed  a  very  hard-hearted  place.  It  was 
always  a  shock  to  her  to  see  such  laughing,  light- 
hearted  indifference.  Sometimes  she  went  on  a  similar 
errand  to  the  headquarters  of  other  unions.  There 
she  found  her  own  people  and  sure  sympathy.  She 
spoke  one  evening  in  a  barren,  ill-lit  room,  where  the 
" pastry  cooks"  held  their  meetings.  They  were 
most  of  them  foreigners,  French  and  German,  just 
coming  out  of  a  disastrous  strike,  and  were  very 
poor.  They  had  no  money  in  their  treasury,  but 
some  of  them  went  down  in  their  pockets,  and  she  got 
a  handful  of  nickels  and  dimes.  It  was  not  as  much 
as  she  had  secured  from  some  " ladies"  in  the  after 
noon,  but  it  was  more  inspiring.  She  felt  very  keenly 
that  in  some  mystic  way  their  gift,  which  they  could  so 
ill  afford,  would  be  of  greater  use  to  the  Cause  than  the 
dollars  from  uptown. 

The  well-dressed  women  she  met  seemed  to  her  of 
small  worth  compared  to  her  trade-mates.  She  was 
proud  of  her  share  in  the  wonderful  heroism  of  the 
women  who  went  hungry.  The  memory  of  her  father 
was  the  most  brilliant  of  her  mental  treasures.  If  she 
had  been  brought  up  by  a  more  practical  man,  if  her 
father  had  taught  her  to  consider  elegance,  or  social 
success,  or  wealth,  or  culture  of  more  virtue  than 
loving  kindness  —  as  most  of  us  are  taught  —  her 
verdict  would,  of  course,  have  been  less  severe.  But 
she  could  not  feel  that  the  Golden  Rule  was  taken 
seriously  by  the  Christian  women  uptown.  She 


162  COMRADE  YETTA 

doubted  if  they  loved  their  neighbors  as  themselves. 
Certainly  their  definition  of  the  word  did  not  reach 
downtown.  The  diamonds  of  their  useless  ornaments 
threw  a  cruel  light  on  the  misery  of  her  people. 

In  forming  this  harsh  estimate  of  the  world  of  luxury 
she  had  Mabel  beside  her  as  a  standard  of  comparison. 
Why  were  the  other  women  different  from  Mabel  ? 
They  were  no  more  beautiful,  no  better  educated,  no 
more  refined.  But  Mabel  was  the  "real  thing." 
Yetta  was  ashamed  of  her  first  envy  and  distrust. 
Day  by  day  she  saw  more  fully  the  broad  scope  of 
Mabel's  activities  —  of  which  this  vest-makers'  strike 
was  only  one  —  and  her  admiring  wonder  grew.  Mabel 
gave  not  only  her  time,  but  she  was  not  afraid  of  what 
the  girls  called  " dirty  work";  she  carried  a  banner  in 
the  street  on  the  day  of  the  parade,  she  did  her  turn  at 
picketing,  her  share  of  addressing  and  sealing  envelopes. 
And  she  carried  very  much  more  than  her  share  of  the 
heavier  responsibilities.  Yetta  found  it  hard  to  under 
stand  how  other  women,  who  also  knew  the  facts  of 
misery,  could  act  so  differently.  Yet,  day  after  day 
she  told  them  the  facts,  and  they  were  content  to  give 
five  or  ten  dollars.  No.  Yetta  did  not  want  to  be  a 
"lady." 

Almost  every  day  some  of  the  pickets  were  arrested 
and  sent  to  the  workhouse.  But  others  always 
volunteered  to  take  their  places.  There  is  no  surer  les 
son  to  be  learned  from  history  than  that  persecution 
is  like  oil  to  the  flame  of  enthusiasm.  Instead  of  break 
ing,  as  the  bosses  —  with  the  fatuousness  of  Nero — 
had  hoped,  the  picket  became  more  intense  and  more 
effective.  The  bosses  decided  that  "  something  decisive 
must  be  done."  There  were  several  conferences  — 


THE  STRIKE  163 

very  quiet  and  orderly  they  were  —  with  the  expert 
strike-breakers  who  had  been  loaned  to  them  by  the 
Employers'  Association.  A  long  statement  was  pre 
pared,  which  informed  the  public  that  the  vest  manu 
facturers,  feeling  that  they  were  not  getting  sufficient 
assistance  from  the  city  police,  had  employed  a  private 
detective  agency  to  protect  their  property  and  the 
lives  of  their  faithful  employees  from  the  outrages  of 
the  strikers.  All  the  English  papers  published  this 
statement  without  any  inquiry  as  to  whether  life  and 
property  needed  special  protection.  The  more  com 
plaisant  ones  published  the  stories  which  the  "  press 
agent"  of  the  association  furnished  on  the  " outrages." 
So  the  impression  was  spread  abroad  that  the  striking 
vest-makers  were  smoky-haired  furies,  who  brawled  in 
the  streets  and  tore  the  clothes  off  respectable  women. 

But  there  was  hardly  any  one  who  had  ever  been 
involved  in  a  strike,  employer  or  employed,  hardly 
a  cub-reporter  in  the  city,  who  did  not  know  what  this 
announcement  meant.  The  bosses  had  failed  to 
break  the  strike  by  " legal"  means.  The  " private 
detectives"  had  been  called  in  to  do  it  by  intimidation 
and  brutality.  Girls  began  coming  into  the  strike 
headquarters  with  bleeding  faces,  with  black  and  blue 
bruises  from  kicks. 

No  justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  has  handed  down  a 
decision  on  the  probability  of  the  public  peace  being 
disturbed  by  the  use  of  thugs,  calling  themselves 
"private  detectives,"  in  labor  disputes. 

Mabel,  realizing  Yetta's  special  usefulness  as  a 
speaker  and  money-raiser,  tried  to  persuade  her  that 
this  other  work  was  more  important  than  picketing. 

"No,"  Yetta  said.     "If  I  didn't  spend  the  morning 


164  COMRADE  YETTA 

with  the  girls,  I  would  not  have  anything  to  say  at 
night.7' 

Mabel  did  not  urge  her  further ;  she  no  longer  called 
her  la  petite  when  she  spoke  of  her  to  Eleanor.  Every 
one  who  came  in  contact  with  her  during  these  weeks 
knew  that  she  was  growing  very  rapidly  into  woman 
hood. 

Yetta  expected  to  get  arrested.  Why  should  she 
not  ?  In  a  way  she  had  started  all  the  trouble.  Why 
should  the  other  girls  be  knocked  about  by  the  ruffian 
private  detectives  and  she  escape?  Day  .after  day 
she  took  her  post  before  one  or  another  of  the  vest 
shops  and  did  her  duty  as  she  saw  it,  as  the  other 
women  were  doing  it.  There  were  always  two  pickets 
at  each  post,  and  it  was  in  these  morning  watches  that 
Yetta  got  her  deepest  insight  into  the  lives  of  her  com 
rades. 

She  was  having  a  very  easy  time  of  it.  She  had  a 
pleasant  place  to  sleep.  She  had  her  one  sure  meal  a 
day.  There  were  no  children  crying  to  her  for  food. 
The  other  women  were  faring  worse  than  she.  Some 
were  sick,  almost  all  were  hungry  and  insufficiently  clad. 
And  while  Yetta  was  often  called  away  to  the  less 
fatiguing  work  of  the  office,  or  to  some  uptown  tea, 
these  women,  used  to  sitting  all  day  before  a  machine, 
were  standing  hour  after  hour  before  their  posts.  But 
it  was  not  the  sight  of  them,  pitiful  spectacles  as  many 
of  them  were,  which  hurt  Yetta  most.  It  was  their 
stories  —  unintentionally  told  for  the  most  part.  The 
words  dropped  by  chance,  which  called  up  visions  of 
sick  husbands  and  the  hungry  babies.  Some  of  the 
pickets  were  gray-haired  and  bent,  some  were  younger 
than  Yetta,  and  they  all  seemed  to  be  suffering  more  for 


THE  STRIKE  165 

the  strike  than  she.  And  the  hungry  babies  !  Her 
sleep  was  troubled  at  night  by  dreams  of  their  cries. 

That  she  had  been  spared  by  the  police  and  thugs 
seemed  to  Yetta  the  most  unjust  thing  of  all  the  in 
justice  she  saw  about  her.  A  week  on  "the  Island" 
would  mean  little  to  her ;  she  had  no  one  dependent  on 
her.  But  always  they  picked  some  widow,  who  had  no 
one  to  care  for  her  children  while  she  was  in  prison. 
Yetta  felt  herself  strong  and  healthy.  Why  did  the 
thugs  always  beat  up  some  old  woman  or  some  frail 
consumptive  girl?  Although  she  had  escaped  trouble 
so  long,  she  quietly  and  without  excitement  expected 
it.  Whenever  she  met  any  of  the  girls  who  had  been  in 
the  workhouse,  she  asked  about  it  —  in  the  same  way 
that  we,  if  we  were  expecting  to  winter  in  Paris,  would 
inquire  from  friends  who  had  been  there  about  the 
rents  and  shops  and  so  forth. 

But  when  at  last  her  turn  came,  it  happened  in  a 
manner  utterly  unexpected. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

ARREST 

AT  headquarters  on  May  Day  morning  Yetta  was 
detailed  to  the  Crown  Vest  Company.  As  she  was 
starting  out,  she  met  Mabel,  whose  mackintosh  was 
glistening  with  rain. 

"Oh,  Yetta,"  she  said,  " don't  go  out  to-day.  The 
weather's  so  bad,  and  if  you  catch  cold  you  can't  speak." 

But  Yetta  only  smiled.  It  seemed  to  Mabel  that  she 
had  never  looked  so  beautiful  before.  Her  face  had 
begun  to  hollow  a  little  from  the  strain,  her  olive  skin 
was  a  shade  paler,  her  eyes  seemed  to  have  grown 
bigger.  And  her  shoulders,  which  had  begun  to  stoop 
in  the  sweat-shop,  had  straightened  up  with  the  month 
on  her  feet  and  the  new  pride  of  combat.  She  was 
wearing  the  same  skirt  and  waist  she  had  worn  to  the 
dance,  for  she  was  to  speak  uptown  that  afternoon,  and 
she  had  a  warm  shawl  over  her  head  and  shoulders. 
The  soles  of  her  shoes  were  worn  through,  but  Mabel 
could  not  see  that. 

"I've  only  got  a  few  hours  of  it,"  she  said.  " There's 
that  Advisory  Council  again  this  afternoon." 

And  she  went  out  into  the  rain.  The  Crown  Vest 
Company  was  on  East  Fourth  Street,  just  off  Washing 
ton  Square.  As  Yetta  turned  the  corner  from  Broad- 

166 


ARREST  167 

way  she  was  nearly  blown  off  her  feet.  All  the  winds 
of  heaven  —  the  biting,  penetrating  winds  of  a  late 
spring  storm  —  were  caught  in  Washington  Square 
as  in  a  funnel,  and  escaped  through  the  narrow  canon 
of  East  Fourth  Street.  Although  Yetta  was  late,  she 
was  surprised  to  find  no  other  picket  before  the  Crown 
Vest  Company.  They  were  always  assigned  in  couples. 
Her  surprise  turned  to  distress  when  she  recognized 
the  "  private  detective  "  in  the  doorway.  His  real  name 
nobody  knew.  He  called  himself  Brennan,  but  the  girls 
called  him  "Pick- Axe."  He  was  the  one  they  dreaded 
more  than  any  other.  He  thought  himself  a  wit.  It 
was  his  custom  to  tilt  a  chair  against  the  wall  by  the 
doorway  and,  lighting  his  pipe,  amuse  himself  by  trying 
to  make  the  girls  blush.  There  was  no  limit  to  the 
brutality  or  nastiness  of  his  tongue. 

"Come  in  out  of  the  rain,  Dearie,"  he  said  when  he 
saw  Yetta.  "There's  room  for  two  on  this  chair." 

She  tried  not  to  hear  him  and  began  a  sentry-like 
tread  back  and  forth  before  the  door.  At  least  she  was 
glad  it  was  raining.  Sometimes  in  good  weather  a 
crowd  of  depraved  loungers  would  gather  to  listen  to 
Pick- Axe's  wit. 

"It's  too  bad  to  have  to  work  on  a  day  like  this, 
Little  One,"  he  called  as  she  passed  again.  "Let's 
go  over  to  the  saloon  and  have  a  drink.  There  are 
nice  warm  rooms  upstairs." 

Yetta  felt  she  would  not  shiver  so  hard  if  it  were 
not  for  his  cold,  stinging  voice.  She  decided  it  would 
be  cowardly  to  let  him  drive  her  out  of  earshot.  That 
would  please  him  too  much.  She  wondered  why  the 
other  picket  was  not  there. 

"You  needn't  be  so  proud"  —  when  she  was  again 


168  COMRADE  YETTA 

opposite  him.  "The  first  girl  this  morning  tried  to  be 
proud.  But  she  got  over  it.  What's  the  use  ?  Better 
come  and  have  a  drink,  same  as  she  did." 

Yetta  knew  it  was  a  lie.  And  yet  —  good  God,  it 
was  cold  !  She  had  had  her  fill  of  eggs  and  hot  coffee 
that  morning.  She  wouldn't  be  hungry  till  noon,  and 
she  was  so  near  home,  she  could  get  a  good  lunch. 
Some  of  the  girls  were  always  hungry.  Few  of  them 
had  warm  clothes  for  such  weather.  How  could  they 
stand  it  ?  She  wished  she  had  asked  the  name  of  the 
other  girl  detailed  to  the  Crown. 

"I  felt  right  sorry  for  her,"  Pick- Axe  went  on. 
"Gawd  !  she  was  hungry.  You  ought  to  have  seen  her 
eat.  Pretty  little  girl,  too.  Now  she's  having  a  good 
sleep." 

Of  course  it  was  a  lie.  But  Yetta  felt  herself  getting 
colder  and  colder.  Pick-Axe  got  up  and  came  towards 
her.  She  tried  not  to  notice  him,  but  she  wanted  very 
much  to  run. 

"Come  on,"  he  said.  "What's  the  use  of  being  a 
fool  ?  Nobody's  outdoors.  They  ain't  no  scabs  coming 
to-day.  Let's  go  over  to  the  saloon  and  make  friends." 

Yetta  having  reached  the  end  of  her  beat  turned  me 
chanically  and  started  back  towards  where  he  stood. 

"That's  a  sensible  girl,"  he  said. 

But  she  walked  on  past  him  as  if  he  were  a  lamp 
post. 

"Well,"  he  snarled,  "I  guess  I'll  have  to  go  over  and 
wake  up  your  friend.  It'll  take  you  about  half  an  hour 
to  wish  you'd  come  instead.  ..." 

There  is  no  need  of  printing  all  that  he  said. 

He  walked  across  the  street.  Yetta  could  not  help 
turning  her  head  to  watch  him  as  he  entered  the  swing- 


ARREST  169 

ing  door.  He  caught  her  glance  and  waved  his  hand. 
Her  fright  disappeared  in  anger.  Of  course  she  did 
not  believe  that  he  had  persuaded  one  of  her  union 
girls  to  go  into  the  saloon  with  him.  But  it  was  even 
viler  to  pretend  that  he  had.  Some  one  ought  to  kill 
the  brute. 

Just  then  Yetta  saw  one  of  the  strikers  —  little  Mrs. 
Muscovitz  —  hurrying  up  the  street.  Yetta  rushed  to 
meet  her. 

"Were  you  detailed  here?"  she  asked  eagerly. 

Mrs.  Muscovitz  was  coughing  and  could  only  nod 
her  head  affirmatively.  Yetta  wanted  to  shout  with 
joy.  So  Pick- Axe's  story  was  after  all  a  lie. 

"I'm  sorry  I'm  late,"  little  Mrs.  Muscovitz  said 
hoarsely,  for  she  was  "bad  with  bronchitis,"  "but  I 
got  a  little  money  this  morning  and  I  had  to  buy  some 
things  for  the  baby." 

One  glance  told  Yetta  where  the  money  had  come 
from  —  Mrs.  Muscovitz  had  pawned  her  shawl.  More 
than  once  they  had  picketed  together,  and  Yetta  knew 
the  little  woman's  story.  Three  years  before  she  had 
married  a  young  sign  painter.  Before  the  honeymoon 
was  over  he  had  begun  to  cough.  He  died  before  the 
baby  was  born.  And  when  Mrs.  Muscovitz  had  been 
able  to  get  about  again,  all  the  furniture  of  their  little 
home  had  gone  for  doctor's  bills.  Her  engagement  and 
wedding  rings  had  brought  her  enough  to  establish 
herself  in  a  garret.  She  took  the  baby  to  a  day  nursery 
and  went  to  work.  Now,  she  was  coughing.  It 
hurts  to  cough  when  one  also  has  the  bronchitis. 
Having  no  shawl,  her  thin  waist  was  soaked  and  plas 
tered  to  her  skin.  Yetta  could  see  the  muscles  of  her 
back  work  convulsively  whenever  she  coughed. 


170  COMRADE  YETTA 

"Look  y'ere,  Mrs.  Muscovitz,"  she  said  authorita 
tively.  "  You  go  home.  You  ain't  got  no  business  out 
on  a  day  like  this.  You'll  catch  your  death.  There 
ain't  nothing  doing  to-day.  I  can  hold  it  down  alone." 

"It's  all  right  for  you  to  talk,  Yetta,"  Mrs.  Musco- 
vitz  replied.  "You  can  make  speeches  and  you  can 
work  in  the  office  and  do  lots  of  things  for  the  Union. 
There  ain't  nothing  I  can  do  but  picket.  I  couldn't 
pay  rent  without  the  'strike  benefits.'  I've  got  to  do 
something." 

Pick- Axe  came  out  of  the  saloon  and  seeing  them  to 
gether,  knowing  that  it  was  less  sport  trying  to  torment 
two  women  than  one,  pulled  his  chair  well  inside  of  the 
doorway  and  cursed  the  vile  weather. 

"I  tell  you  what  you  can  do,"  Yetta  went  on  arguing 
with  Mrs.  Muscovitz.  "It'll  do  more  good  than  stand 
ing  here.  You  go  over  to  headquarters  and  make  some 
coffee.  You  tell  Miss  Train  I  said  it  was  so  cold  she 
must  send  coffee  out  to  the  girls.  You  can  borrow  some 
pails  and  cups  and  Mrs.  Weinstein's  boy'll  carry  it 
round.  Hot  coffee'll  do  the  girls  good,  and  it'll  make  the 
cops  sore  to  see  us  getting  it.  Making  coffee'll  do  more 
good  than  standing  here.  Nobody's  out;  I  can  hold 
down  this  job  all  right." 

"I  hate  to  leave  you  alone  with  that  snake." 

"Oh,"  Yetta  laughed,  more  light-heartedly  than  she 
felt.  "Words  don't  break  no  bones.  You  run  along." 

While  Mrs.  Muscovitz  was  hesitating,  she  caught 
sight  of  a  scab.  "Look,"  she  whispered.  A  big-boned 
young  woman  of  about  twenty,  poorly  clad  and  appar 
ently  much  frightened,  was  standing  on  the  opposite 
curbstone.  She  looked  up  at  the  sign  in  the  window 
of  the  Crown  Vest  Company  advertising  the  need  of 


ARREST  171 

workers.  And  she  looked  down  at  the  two  women  be 
fore  the  door.  After  a  few  indecisive  minutes  she 
started  across  the  street. 

"You  run  along  to  headquarters  and  get  that  coffee 
started/'  Yetta  said.  "I'll  talk  to  her." 

"No,"  said  Mrs.  Muscovitz.  "Let  me  do  it.  And 
then  I'll  go.  I  want  to  do  something." 

She  started  towards  the  woman.  Pick- Axe,  bundled 
up  in  his  overcoat,  back  in  the  entryway,  did  not  see 
the  scab  approaching.  She  had  probably  read  in  the 
papers  lying  stories  of  how  the  strike  breakers  were 
being  attacked.  She  was  very  much  afraid,  and  when 
she  saw  Mrs.  Muscovitz  coming  towards  her,  she 
screamed.  Pick- Axe,  not  having  seen  what  was  hap 
pening,  —  if  one  wishes  to  find  excuses  for  him,  —  may 
have  really  believed  that  the  little  Mrs.  Muscovitz  had 
assaulted  the  husky  young  scab.  At  the  sound  of  the 
scream  he  jumped  out  of  his  chair  and  rushed  at  Mrs. 
Muscovitz.  She,  thinking  that  he  was  going  to  strike 
her,  held  out  her  hand  to  guard  her  face.  Pick- Axe 
grabbed  it,  arid  with  a  vicious  wrench,  twisted  her 
down  on  her  knees. 

"You  slut!  You--  !  You--  !"  he  bellowed  and 
swung  his  heavy-soled  boot  into  her  ribs. 

Yetta  —  to  use  a  phrase  of  melodrama  —  "saw 
red."  Something  happened  in  her  brain.  Her  rather 
Platonic  conviction  of  a  few  minutes  before  that  some 
body  ought  to  kill  the  brute,  was  changed  into  a  pas 
sionate,  throbbing  desire  to  do  it  herself. 

Just  as  his  foot  found  its  goal  in  Mrs.  Muscovitz' 
side,  Pick- Axe  felt  the  sudden  impact  of  Yetta's  whole 
weight.  It  was  more  of  a  spring  than  a  rush.  As 
far  as  she  had  any  idea,  she  wanted  to  choke  him. 


172  COMRADE  YETTA 

The  sudden  jolt  bowled  him  over  —  he  was  standing 
on  one  foot  —  and  as  he  fell  his  head  came  down  on 
the  stone  paving  with  a  sickening  thud.  If  it  had  not 
been  for  his  heavy  cap,  the  blow  might  have  cracked 
his  skull.  As  it  was  it  stunned  him.  His  face  turned 
very  white.  The  scab  ran  up  the  street  too  frightened 
to  look  back. 

' i  I  hope  he's  dead, ' '  Yetta  said  with  tight-clenched  fists. 

But  Mrs.  Muscovitz  felt  his  heart  and  shook  her  head. 

"Sure?"  Yetta  asked. 

"Yes.     His  heart's  beating.     Feel  it  yourself." 

"I  wouldn't  touch  the  snake  with  my  foot,"  Yetta 
said;  "come  on." 

"Nobody  but  the  scab  seen  us,"  Mrs.  Muscovitz  said. 

"Come  on/'  Yetta  repeated.  "Let's  go  to  head 
quarters." 

Somehow  she  did  not  care  whether  any  one  had  seen 
her  or  not.  She  had  tried  to  kill  a  man  and  regretted 
that  she  had  not  succeeded.  She  had  read  stories  of 
murderers'  remorse.  And  now  she  knew  they  were  lies. 
She  would  never  have  been  sorry  if  she  had  killed  that 
snake. 

As  they  were  turning  into  Broadway,  Mrs.  Muscovitz, 
who  was  always  looking  back,  suddenly  gripped  Yetta' s 
arm. 

"He's  getting  up,"  she  said.  "There's  a  man  helping 
him." 

They  both  peered  back  around  the  corner  and  saw 
Pick- Axe,  with  the  aid  of  the  stranger,  painfully  get 
ting  to  his  feet  and  rubbing  his  head  in  bewilderment. 

"Come  on,"  Yetta  said.  "He'll  begin  to  holler  in  a 
minute.  I've  got  a  dime.  We'll  take  a  car." 

They  ran  to  catch  a  downtown  car.     They  rode  in 


ARREST  173 

silence,  Mrs.  Muscovitz  nursing  her  aching  arm  and  the 
bruise  in  her  side.  Yetta,  surprised  at  the  calm  which 
had  come  after  the  sudden  typhoon  of  passion,  kept 
repeating,  "I  tried  to  kill  him,  I  tried  to  kill  him." 

At  the  headquarters  they  found  Isadore  Braun,  just 
returned  from  attending  to  the  morning's  batch  of 
arrested  pickets  in  Essex  Market  Court. 

"Come  into  the  committee-room/'  Yetta  said  to 
him  quietly.  "We've  had  some  trouble." 

"What  is  it?"  he  asked  professionally  as  he  closed 
the  door. 

"It's  bad,"  Yetta  replied.  "Mrs.  Muscovitz  and  I 
was  picketing  the  Crown.  And  Pick- Axe  —  well,  he 
jumped  on  her  and  —  well  —  I  knocked  him  senseless." 

Braun  bounced  out  of  his  chair  in  amazement. 

"You?  You  knocked  Pick- Axe  senseless?  You're 
joking." 

But  Yetta  shrugged  her  shoulders  affirmatively. 
And  Braun  began  to  laugh.  He  knew  Pick- Axe. 
Every  few  days  he  encountered  the  bully  in  court, 
listened  to  his  cold-blooded  perjuries.  He  knew,  from 
the  girls,  of  his  brutality.  And  he  thought  he  knew 
Yetta.  Her  first  speech  at  the  Skirt-Finishers'  ball 
had  attracted  his  attention.  He  had  followed  her  de 
velopment  through  the  four  weeks  of  the  strike  with 
increasing  interest.  Above  all  he  had  been  impressed 
with  her  quiet,  gentle  ways.  The  idea  that  she  had 
knocked  out  Pick-Axe  was  preposterous. 

But  Mrs.  Muscovitz  added  her  affirmation.  As  he 
gradually  got  the  details  from  them  he  grew  more  and 
more  serious.  It  was  the  first  time  the  enemy  had  had 
any  real  ground  to  charge  them  with  violence.  They 
would  certainly  make  the  most  of  it. 


174  COMRADE  YETTA 

"  Do  you  think  he  knows  your  face  ?  "  he  asked  Yetta. 

"Sure." 

Braun  realized  that  his  question  had  been  foolish. 
Yetta  was  the  most-advertised,  best-known  person  con 
nected  with  the  strike. 

" They'll  be  after  you  with  a  warrant/7  he  said. 

Yetta  shrugged  her  shoulders. 

"Were  there  any  witnesses?"  he  asked. 

"Only  the  scab/'  Mrs.  Muscovitz  said.  "She  run 
away.  I  guess  she's  too  scared  to  come  back.  And  the 
man  who  helped  him  get  up." 

Braun  sat  for  a  few  minutes,  with  his  chin  in  his 
hands,  thinking  it  out. 

"We'll  have  to  lie,"  he  said  at  last.  "This  is  the 
story.  Mrs.  Muscovitz  was  talking  to  the  scab.  Pick- 
Axe  twisted  her  arm  and  kicked  her.  That's  all  true. 
You  tried  to  separate  them.  That's  true,  too,  in  a 
way—" 

"I  tried  to  kill  him,"  Yetta  put  in. 

"But  you  mustn't  tell  the  judge  that !  You  tried  to 
separate  them,  and  he  slipped  on  the  wet  pavement 
and  bumped  his  head.  You  two  ran  away,  afraid  that 
he'd  attack  you.  You  took  a  Broadway  car  and  came 
straight  here.  Let's  see  — •"  he  looked  at  his  watch  — 
"You  got  here  about  eleven  thirty." 

"I'd  rather  tell  the  truth,"  Yetta  insisted.  "Tell 
the  judge  just  what  the  snake  said  to  me  and  why  I 
was  mad." 

"You  can't  do  that.  In  the  first  place  the  judge 
would  not  listen  to  all  of  it.  And  then  he  would  not 
believe  you.  They're  looking  for  a  chance  to  say  we 
are  using  violence.  Why  did  you  do  it  —  Oh,  well, 
there's  no  use  asking  that.  It's  done.  We've  got  to  lie." 


ARREST  175 

Yetta  looked  unconvinced. 

"It  won't  only  be  worse  for  you/'  Braun  went  on. 
"It'll  be  worse  for  all  of  us,  if  you  tell  the  truth." 

"All  right,  then,"  Yetta  said  reluctantly.  "I'll 
lie." 

Just  then  Mabel  rushed  in  without  knocking. 

"Pick- Axe  and  a  plain-clothes  man  are  out  here  with 
a  warrant  for  Yetta,"  she  cried.  "Where  can  we  hide 
her?" 

"We  won't  hide  her,"  Braun  said.  "We  don't  want 
to  seem  afraid  of  this  charge." 

"What's  it  all  about?"  she  asked. 

"Why,  Pick- Axe  was  getting  gay  as  usual,"  Braun 
said.  "He  slipped  on  the  wet  pavement  or  tripped 
over  something  and  bumped  his  head.  I  guess  he's 
trying  to  make  an  assault  charge  out  of  it." 

"What?"  Mabel  asked  in  astonishment.  "He's 
got  the  face  to  say  that  Yetta  attacked  him?" 

Yetta  started  to  say,  "I  did,"  but  Braun  kicked 
her  unobtrusively  and  she  kept  still. 

"Go  out  and  tell  them  we  will  surrender  at  once," 
Braun  said. 

As  soon  as  Mabel  had  left  he  hurriedly  repeated  the 
story  they  were  to  tell. 

"Don't  tell  anybody  the  truth,"  he  insisted.  "Not 
any  one.  Not  even  Miss  Train.  We've  got  to  bluff. 
And  the  more  people  who  believe  we  are  telling  the 
truth,  the  better  the  bluff  is." 

They  went  out  into  the  main  room,  and  Yetta  was 
formally  put  under  arrest. 

"That's  the  other  woman,"  Pick- Axe  said  at  sight  of 
Mrs.  Muscovitz. 

"I  haven't  any  warrant  for  her,"  the  plain-clothes 


176  COMRADE  YETTA 

man  said.     He  had  no  especial  affection  for  the  ruffian 
who  pretended  to  be  a  detective. 

"She  is  coming  to  court  anyhow  as  a  witness/' 
Braun  said. 

At  that  moment  he  caught  sight  of  Longman  and 
a  reporter  and  a  ray  of  hope.  He  hurried  over  to 
them. 

"Longman,"  he  said,  "they've  arrested  Yetta  Rayef- 
sky  on  an  utterly  absurd  charge  of  attacking  that  thug, 
Brennan,  whom  the  girls  call  Pick- Axe.  I  wish  you'd 
come  over  to  court.  I  can  use  you,  I  think,  in  the 
defence.  And"  — he  turned  to  the  reporter,  "it  may 
be  worth  your  while  to  come,  too.  I  think  there'll  be 
a  story  in  it." 

So  the  little  procession  set  out.  Yetta  walked  ahead 
between  Pick-Axe  and  the  detective.  Braun  and  Mrs. 
Muscovitz  and  Longman  and  the  reporter  trailed 
behind. 

There  was  hardly  anything  more  sincere  about 
Pick- Axe  than  his  fear  and  hatred  of  Braun,  so  he  kept 
his  mouth  shut  as  long  as  he  was  in  hearing.  But  when 
the  steel  door  of  Essex  Market  Prison  had  clanged 
shut  behind  him,  as  soon  as  the  desk  man  had  entered 
Yetta' s  name  and  age  and  address  on  his  book,  Pick- 
Axe  gave  rein  to  his  filthy  wrath.  They  had  taken  her 
into  the  "examination  room,"  and  Yetta,  following 
Braun's  advice,  refused  to  answer  any  questions. 
She  crouched  in  a  corner  and  tried  not  to  hear  what  he 
was  saying.  She  had  grown  up  in  a  community  where 
men  are  not  over-careful  in  their  choice  of  expletives, 
but  she  had  never  listened  to  anything  like  this. 

It  would  have  been  very  hard  for  Yetta  to  tell  any 
one  —  even  Mabel  —  what  that  quarter  of  an  hour 


ARREST  177 

meant  to  her.  She  was  not  exactly  afraid.  In  a  way 
she  was  prepared  for  it.  She  had  heard  Pick- Axe 
talk  before.  The  girls  had  told  her  that  the  worst  thing 
they  had  suffered  during  their  imprisonment  was  what 
they  had  had  to  listen  to,  insults  and  obscenity  and  the 
mad  ravings  of  the  " drunks." 

Although  Yetta  was  not  afraid  nor  surprised,  her 
whole  being  shuddered  under  it.  Her  flesh  seemed  to 
contract  in  an  effort  to  escape  the  contagion  of  such 
loathsomeness.  For  years  she  would  turn  suddenly 
pale  at  the  barest  memory  of  that  torrent  of  abuse. 
Once  Pick-Axe  came  close  as  if  he  was  going  to  strike 
her,  but  the  detective  pulled  him  away.  Yetta  was 
almost  sorry.  It  would  have  been  a  relief  if  he  had 
struck  her  with  his  hand. 

And  yet  it  was  very  little  for  herself  that  Yetta 
suffered.  She  was  being  sacrified  for  a  great  host. 
What  they  did  to  her  mattered  very  little,  but  in  her 
they  were  striking  at  all  the  myriad  "  people  of  the 
process"  —  the  women  of  her  trade,  the  cloth  weavers, 
the  wool-growers,  those  who  grew  wheat  for  their 
bread,  who  made  beds  for  them  to  sleep  in.  She  felt 
herself  a  delicate  instrument  for  the  transmission  of 
sound.  Those  stinging,  cruel  words  were  going  out  to 
the  remotest  corners  of  the  land,  were  bringing  shame 
on  all  the  lowly  people  of  the  earth,  just  as  his  kick, 
crashing  into  Mrs.  Muscovitz7  side,  had  made  them  all 
gasp  with  pain.  Once  she  looked  up,  she  wanted  to 
ask  him  what  they  paid  him  that  made  it  worth  his 
while  to  treat  her  people  so.  But  she  knew  it  was 
useless  to  ask  —  he  would  not  have  understood. 

Then  echoing  down  the  corridor,  she  heard  a  warden 
bawling  her  name.  From  the  point  of  view  of  Braun's 


178  COMRADE  YETTA 

intended  defence,  Yetta's  arrest  had  come  at  a  fortunate 
time  of  day.  By  noon  the  morning  calendar  is  dis 
posed  of,  and  he  could  have  her  arraigned  for  hearing 
at  once.  The  least  delay  meant  the  possibility  of  the 
prosecution  finding  some  witness  who  had  seen  Yetta 
strike  Pick-Axe. 

Yetta  had  wanted  to  tell  the  judge  the  truth.  It 
was  only  because  Braun  insisted  that  it  would  endanger 
the  success  of  the  strike  that  she  had  consented  to  lie. 
But  when  she  was  led  into  the  court-room,  her  scruples 
left  her. 

Telling  the  truth  is  like  a  quarrel  —  there  must  be 
two  parties  to  it.  Nicolas  Gay,  the  Russian  painter, 
has  a  canvas  called,  "What  is  Truth?'7  It  portrays 
Pontius  Pilate,  putting  this  question  to  the  Christ. 
And  you  realize  at  once  why  the  Prisoner  could  not  an 
swer.  Truth  is  not  the  enunciation  of  certain  words. 
Nothing  which  the  scorned  and  scourged  and  thorn- 
crowned  Jesus  might  have  said  about  His  Truth  could 
have  penetrated  the  thick  skull  of  the  gross  and  pride- 
filled  Roman  proconsul. 

Yetta,  in  a  somewhat  similar  situation,  understood  at 
once  that  this  dingy  court-room  was  not  an  Abode  of 
Truth.  Magistrate  Cornett,  before  whom  she  was  led, 
although  a  young  man,  was  quite  bald.  He  sat  hunched 
up  in  his  great  chair,  and  the  folds  of  his  heavy  black 
robe  made  him  look  deformed.  His  finger  nails  were 
manicured.  His  skin  was  carefully  groomed,  but  the 
flesh  under  it  was  flabby.  His  face  and  hands  were 
those  of  a  gourmand. 

The  clerk  read  the  complaint.  It  charged  Yetta 
with  assault  in  all  its  degrees  in  that  on  that  very  day 
she  had  with  felonious  intent  struck  one  Michael 


ARREST  179 

Brennan  on  the  head  with  a  dangerous  weapon,  to  wit 
a  blackjack. 

" Guilty  or  not  guilty?" 

"Not  guilty/'  Braun  replied. 

The  plain-clothes  man  deposed  that  he  knew  nothing 
about  the  case  except  that  he  had  served  the  warrant 
as  directed  by  the  court.  He  had  found  the  defendant 
in  the  strike  headquarters  of  the  vest-makers. 

The  man  who  had  helped  Brennan  get  up  was  a 
clerk  in  a  neighboring  wholesale  house.  He  had  been 
sent  out  with  a  telegram,  and  in  the  rain-swept,  de 
serted  street  he  had  seen  no  one  but  the  prostrate 
detective,  who  was  just  regaining  consciousness  as  he 
came  up.  He  helped  the  stricken  man  to  his  feet,  and 
that  was  all  he  knew. 

Then  Michael  Brennan,  alias  Pick-Axe,  took  the 
stand.  Ordinarily  he  made  a  fairly  good  appearance 
in  court.  He  felt  himself  among  friends,  felt  a  reassur 
ing  kinship  with  the  policemen,  the  clerks,  and  even 
with  the  judge.  To  be  sure  they  all  knew  he  was  a 
perjurer,  and  very  few  of  them  would  shake  hands  with 
him.  But  still  he  was  a  necessary  part  in  the  great 
machine  for  preserving  social  order,  by  which  they  all 
were  paid.  But  this  day  he  was  not  at  his  ease. 
In  the  first  place  his  head  ached  horribly.  In  the 
second,  he  was  so  infuriated  that  he  could  scarcely 
control  his  tongue.  And  thirdly,  he  knew  that  he 
was  in  for  a  grilling  from  Braun.  And  he  was  more 
than  usually  afraid  of  this  ordeal  because  he  was  not 
sure  what  had  happened.  He  remembered  kicking 
Mrs.  Muscovitz,  he  had  a  vague  conviction  that  Yetta 
had  rushed  at  him  —  and  then  he  remembered  coming 
to  and  being  helped  to  his  feet. 


180  COMRADE  YETTA 

"Yer  Honor,"  he  began,  "I  was  in  front  of  the 
Crown  Vest  Company  this  morning  doing  duty  as 
usual.  There  wasn't  nobody  around  except  this  here 
Rayefsky  girl  and  a  woman  she's  brought  as  a  wit 
ness.  Well,  Yer  Honor,  I  went  into  the  hallway  to 
light  my  pipe  and  just  at  that  minute  a  scab  comes 
along  — " 

"Your  Honor,"  Braun  interrupted,  "some  of  my 
clients  have  been  sent  to  prison  for  using  that  term. 
This  court  has  held  it  to  be  insulting  and  abusive." 

"It  was  a  slip  of  my  tongue,  Yer  Honor,"  Pick- Axe 
said  with  confusion. 

"Clerk,"  the  Judge  instructed,  "strike  out  that 
word,  and  you  be  more  careful,  Brennan." 

"Yes,  Yer  Honor.  I  was  saying  a  respectable  woman 
came  along  looking  for  work  —  she  wasn't  really  a 
woman,  just  a  young  girl.  I  didn't  see  her  because  I 
was  in  the  hallway  lighting  my  pipe,  as  I  told  Yer 
Honor,  but  I  heard  her  holler  and,  rushing  out,  I  seen 
this  other  woman  a-laying  into  her,  beating  her  up 
something  awful  — " 

Mrs.  Muscovitz  tried  to  protest  from  the  benches, 
but  Longman,  at  a  signal  from  Braun,  hushed  her. 

"Well,  Yer  Honor,  I  runs  up  and  tries  to  arrest  the 
woman,  and  the  other  one  —  this  Rayefsky  girl  — 
jumps  on  me  with  a  blackjack  and  lays  me  out,  Yer 
Honor.  The  first  thing  I  knows  I  come  to,  with  this 
gentleman  a-helping  me  up.  How  long  I  laid  there 
senseless,  Yer  Honor,  I  don't  know.  I  came  right 
over  here  and  got  the  warrant,  and  Officer  Sheehan  and 
me,  we  got  her  at  the  strike  headquarters,  like  he  told 
Yer  Honor." 

"Do  you  wish  to  question  the  witness,  Mr.  Braun?" 


ARREST  181 

"Brennan,"  he  began,  "did  you  see  a  blackjack  in 
the  defendant's  hand  ?" 

"No,  sir!  If  I'd  a  knowed  she  had  a  blackjack 
would  I  have  let  her  sneak  up  behind  me?  No.  I'd 
have  run  her  in  before/' 

"What  makes  you  think  it  was  a  blackjack ?" 

"The  bump  on  my  head."  He  leaned  over  the 
bench  so  the  judge  could  examine  it.  "She  couldn't 
have  made  that  with  her  hand,  Yer  Honor." 

"It  certainly  looks  like  a  blackjack,"  the  judge  said. 

"Are  you  sure,  Brennan,  it  wasn't  a  piece  of  stone?" 

"No.  It  wasn't  no  stone  —  I'd  have  seen  her  pick 
it  up.  It  was  a  blackjack,"  he  insisted  doggedly. 

"How  do  you  know  it  wasn't  a  piece  of  gas-pipe  ?" 

"What's  the  use  of  such  questions?"  the  judge 
asked  impatiently.  "The  crime  would  be  no  less 
serious  if  the  blow  had  been  struck  with  a  piece  of  gas- 
pipe." 

"Your  Honor,"  Braun  replied,  "it  is  a  serious  question. 
Brennan  does  not  know  what  hit  him  and  I  do.  In 
two  more  questions  I  think  I  can  convince  the  Court 
that  he  does  not  know.  Brennan,"  he  turned  to  the 
witness,  "you  say  that  you  had  gone  into  the  hallway 
to  light  your  pipe.  When  you  rushed  out  to  attack 
the  picket,  did  you  see  this  gentleman  coming  down  the 
street?  Professor  Longman,  will  you  please  rise? 
Brennan,  did  you  see  this  gentleman  coming  down  the 
street  with  that  cane  in  his  hand  ?" 

Brennan  had  been  wondering  why  Longman  had 
come  to  the  court.  He  looked  at  him  suspiciously. 

"No,"  he  said.  "I  never  saw  that  man  till  I  got  to 
the  strike  headquarters." 

"Well,  Brennan,  are  you  quite  sure,  are  you  prepared 


182  COMRADE  YETTA 

to  swear  that  when  you  were  kicking  Mrs.  Muscovitz 
about  this  gentleman  did  not  knock  you  down  as  you 
deserved  —  as  any  real  man  would  have  done  ?" 

"I  didn't  kick  the  woman/'  Brennan  said. 

"  That's  not  the  question.  Are  you  sure  it  wasn't 
Professor  Longman  who  laid  you  out?" 

For  a  moment  Brennan  hesitated.  It  was  hard  for 
him  to  believe  that  Yetta  had  knocked  him  senseless. 
He  knew  that  Braun  was  trying  to  catch  him  in  a 
perjury.  And  he  had  a  guilty  conscience. 

"If  it  was  him  that  hit  me/'  he  roared,  "I'll  have  him 
sent  up.  I  was  doing  my  duty." 

"Officer,"  the  judge  said,  "see  that  this  man  does 
not  leave  the  room." 

"It  is  a  useless  precaution,  Your  Honor,"  Braun  said. 
"Professor  Longman  was  nowhere  in  the  neighborhood. 
But  I  think  it  is  quite  clear  that  Brennan  does  not 
know  who  or  what  hit  him." 

The  reporter  who  had  come  with  them,  not  being 
regularly  detailed  to  the  court,  was  not  afraid  to  laugh 
out  loud. 

"I  have  no  other  questions  to  ask,"  Braun  went  on. 
"Will  the  Court  have  the  defendant's  account  of  what 
happened?" 

The  oath  was  administered  to  Yetta  and  she  told  the 
story,  which  Braun  had  taught  her,  more  calmly  and 
simply  than  most  people  tell  the  truth.  The  judge  did 
not  believe  that  a  person  who  had  just  committed  a 
murderous  assault  could  be  so  cool  under  the  charge. 
He  knew  Brennan,  and  that  he  was  probably  lying  now. 
He  himself  had  slipped  on  the  wet  pavement  that  morn 
ing,  his  motor  had  skidded  on  the  way  downtown. 
He  believed  Yetta.  He  had  generally  believed  the 


ARREST  183 

strikers  against  whom  Brennan  and  the  other  "  private 
detectives"  had  testified,  but,  knowing  just  what  was 
expected  of  him  by  those  on  whom  he  depended  for 
advancement,  he  had  sent  the  other  girls  to  jail.  He 
twirled  his  pencil  a  moment,  asking  her  a  few  inconse 
quential  questions,  and  regretfully  came  to  the  con 
clusion  that  he  could  not  possibly  hold  her  on  the  assault 
charge. 

"  Are  there  any  other  witnesses  ?"  he  asked. 

"Mrs.  Muscovitz,  who  was  picketing  with  the  de 
fendant,  is  here,"  Braun  said.  "She  tells  me  exactly 
the  same  story.  She  will  tell  it  to  the  Court  if  Your 
Honor  so  directs.  But  it  seems  rather  a  waste  of  time. 
There  is  no  case  against  my  client.  Brennan  has 
shown  the  Court  that  he  doesn't  know  what  hit  him. 
Look  at  the  two  of  them,  Your  Honor.  If  you  think 
that  any  twelve  men  on  earth  will  believe  that  this 
slip  of  a  girl  assaulted  the  complainant,  you  can  of 
course  hold  her  for  the  Grand  Jury.  But  I  ask  the 
Court  to  discharge  the  defendant." 

"Not  so  fast,  Mr.  Braun,"  the  judge  snapped. 
"Even  admitting  the  truth  of  her  improbable  story  — 
which  I  very  much  question  —  admitting  there  is 
insufficient  evidence  to  hold  her  on  the  assault  charge, 
she  confesses  to  disorderly  conduct  in  interfering  with 
an  officer  who  was  making  an  arrest.  Clerk,  make  out 
a  charge  of  disorderly  conduct.  I  suppose  you'll 
swear  to  the  complaint,  Brennan." 

While  this  detail  was  being  attended  to  at  the  clerk's 
desk,  the  judge  delivered  himself  of  an  informal  philip 
pic  against  the  strikers.  He  aimed  a  good  deal  of  his 
discourse  at  Mrs.  Muscovitz :  it  was  only  the  extreme 
leniency  of  the  Court,  he  said,  which  kept  him  from 


184  COMRADE  YETTA 

ordering  her  arrest ;  —  as  a  matter  of  fact  it  was  past  his 
lunch  time.  His  tirade,  which  he  seemed  to  enjoy  im 
mensely,  as  he  saw  the  reporter  taking  notes,  was  inter 
rupted  by  the  Clerk  handing  him  the  new  papers. 

"  Yetta  Rayefsky,  you  admit  picketing,  which  means 
intimidating  honest  work-people,  before  the  Crown 
Vest  Company  this  morning;  you  admit  interfering 
with  Officer  Brennan,  while  he  was  engaged  in  the 
performance  of  his  duty.  The  Court  finds  you  guilty 
of  disorderly  conduct.  But  the  officers  inform  me  that 
this  is  the  first  time  you  have  been  brought  to  court. 
As  is  my  custom,  I  will  discharge  you  if  you  promise 
not  to  picket  any  more.  Understand  that  if  you  are 
brought  before  me  again,  I  will  send  you  to  prison. 
Take  my  advice  and  go  to  work.  Idleness  always  breeds 
trouble.  Will  you  promise  not  to  picket  any  more  ?" 

"No." 

The  judge  sat  up  with  a  jerk. 

"Ten  days,  workhouse,"  he  thundered. 

And  as  they  led  her  away,  he  rapped  on  his  desk  with 
his  gavel,  and  the  clerk  announced  adjournment. 

"That  little  Jew  girl  had  more  spunk  than  I  gave 
her  credit  for,"  the  judge  said  a  few  minutes  later, 
in  his  chambers,  to  his  secretary  who  was  helping  him 
on  with  his  fur-lined  coat.  "I  wonder  if  she  did 
blackjack  Brennan."  He  had  to  sit  down  again  to 
laugh  at  the  idea. 

"Don't  scold  me,"  Yetta  said  to  Braun,  when  he 
came  into  the  prison  and  spoke  to  her  through  the  grat 
ing.  "I  was  tired  of  lying." 

Braun  said  to  himself  as  he  went  away  that  it  was 
just  like  a  woman  to  get-away  with  a  big  lie  and  stumble 
over  a  little  one. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE    WORKHOUSE 

IN  the  afternoon  Yetta  was  loaded  into  "the  wagon  " 
with  a  lot  of  " drunks"  and  prostitutes  and  taken  up  to 
the  Department  dock  to  wait  for  the  ferry  across  to 
the  Island. 

She  had  not  realized  how  the  month's  strain  had  tired 
her  until  the  excitement  was  over  and  she  was  on  the 
tug  in  midstream.  In  sheer  weariness,  she  turned 
round  on  her  seat  and,  crossing  her  arms  on  its  back, 
buried  her  face  in  them.  Presently  she  felt  a  hand  on 
her  shoulder. 

" Don't  take  it  so  hard,  Little  One,"  a  not  unkindly 
voice  said.  "It's  fierce  at  first,  but  you  get  used  to  it." 
She  looked  up  into  a  face  of  stained  and  faded 
gaudiness. 

"Oh,"  the  woman  said,  somewhat  taken  aback. 
' '  You're  one  of  them  strikers.  Did  they  beat  you  up  ?  " 

"No,"  Yetta  replied,  "I  got  off  easy." 

The  woman  stood  a  moment  first  on  one  foot  and 
then  on  the  other  —  she  could  not  think  of  anything 
more  to  say.  She  went  across  the  boat  and  told  one 
of  her  cronies  what  kind  of  a  shame  she  thought  it  was 
"to  run  in  a  nice  girl  like  that." 

Yetta  was  in  a  strange  state  of  detachment.  It 

185 


186  COMRADE  YETTA 

surprised  her  afterwards  to  remember  how  little  the 
discomforts  of  the  prison  had  troubled  her.  She  was 
hardly  conscious  of  the  dirty,  rough  clothes  they  gave 
her.  The  bitter,  hard,  and  useless  work  of  scrubbing 
the  stone  flagging  seemed  to  her  unreal.  She 
hardly  noticed  the  food  they  set  before  her  for  supper. 
She  was  not  hungry.  And  when  they  let  her  go  to 
bed,  she  plunged  so  quickly  and  deeply  into  the  oblivion 
of  sleep  that  she  did  not  feel  the  vermin  nor  hear  the 
sinister  whispers  of  her  cell-mates.  Her  mind,  utterly 
fagged  out  with  all  the  new  thoughts  and  experiences, 
was  taking  a  vacation.  Even  the  sense  nerves  were  too 
tired  to  record  with  exactitude  their  impressions. 

Before  Yetta  fell  into  this  blissful,  dreamless  sleep 
her  arrest  had  begun  to  stir  up  considerable  excitement 
in  New  York.  When  Braun  and  Longman  returned  to 
the  strike  headquarters  from  the  court-house,  they  found 
Mabel  preparing  to  go  uptown  to  the  meeting  of 
the  Advisory  Council.  The  imprisonment  of  Yetta 
seemed  to  her  the  crowning  outrage  of  the  long  list  of 
trivial  arrests.  She  did  not  dream  how  nearly  the 
charge  came  to  being  true.  Dozens  of  other  girls  had 
been  sent  to  the  workhouse  on  perjured  evidence. 
But  this  seemed  different.  Yetta  was  "hers."  In  the 
past  weeks  she  had  become  "her"  friend.  So  are  we 
all  constituted.  We  read  in  the  morning  paper  that 
thousands  of  Chinese  or  Russians  or  Moors  are  dying 
of  famine.  Perhaps  we  mail  a  check  to  the  Red  Cross. 
But  if  we  should  be  hungry  or  one  of  our  dear  friends 
should  starve,  it  would  seem  extravagantly  unjust. 

In  this  ireful  frame  of  mind,  Mabel  met  the  ladies  of 
the  Advisory  Council.  To  them  also  Yetta  was  a 
much  more  real  personality  than  the  other  girls  who 


THE  WORKHOUSE  187 

had  been  arrested.  Their  Yetta,  their  quiet-mannered, 
sad-eyed,  gentle-voiced  Yetta,  arrested  for  assaulting 
a  man  ?  It  was  impossible  !  With  the  tears  in  her 
eyes,  Mabel  assured  them  that  it  was  true. 

"We  can't  permit  this,"  Mrs.  Van  Cleave  said, 
snapping  her  lorgnette  ominously.  "It  is  preposter 
ous  !  The  young  lady  has  been  a  guest  in  my  house. 
I  have  introduced  her  to  my  friends.  It  can't  be  per 
mitted." 

"Well,  what  can  we  do  about  it?"  Mabel  asked,  for 
once  at  a  loss. 

There  was  a  clamor  of  wild  suggestions.  It  was  at 
last  Mrs.  Karner,  the  woman  whom  Yetta  had  liked, 
and  at  whose  request  she  had  told  about  Harry  Klein, 
who  brought  out  a  practical  plan. 

"We've  got  to  do  it  through  the  newspapers,"  she 
said.  "Stir  up  the  press." 

"Oh,"  Mabel  said  in  despair,  "they  laugh  when  I 
come  into  their  offices.  They're  not  interested,  or 
they're  on  the  other  side." 

"They  laugh  because  they're  used  to  you.  You 
haven't  any  news  value,"  Mrs.  Karner  went  on.  "But 
they  would  not  laugh  if  Mrs.  Van  Cleave  talked  to 
them." 

"Hey?    What?"  Mrs.  Van  Cleave  asked  with  a  start. 

"Oh!  you  won't  even  have  to  go  to  their  offices; 
you  can  send  for  them.  I  worked  on  a  newspaper 
once,  and  I  know.  You  won't  have  to  go  to  them. 
They'll  come.  The  editors  will  eat  out  of  your  hand 
—  do  anything  for  you  on  the  chance  that  you  might 
invite  their  wives  to  dinner.  Have  your  secretary 
call  up  the  papers,  and  you'll  have  a  hundred  special 
writers  camped  on  your  doorstep." 


188  COMRADE  YETTA 

"Well,  well!  What  an  idea!"  Mrs.  Van  Cleave 
snorted. 

All  the  women,  with  various  degrees  of  obsequious 
ness,  begged  her  to  do  it.  But  it  was  not  the  kind  of 
newspaper  notoriety  she  liked. 

"No/7  she  repeated  a  dozen  times.  "I  could  not  do 
that.  Preposterous!  Preposterous!" 

But  she  hardly  heard  the  urgings.  She  was  looking 
away  beyond  the  room  at  the  vision  of  a  little  girl  who 
had  died  many  years  ago  —  the  only  thing  which  had 
not  been  worldly  in  all  her  life.  And  this  little  daughter 
of  hers  had  had  eyes  very  much  like  Yetta's.  Yes. 
Very  much  like.  In  fact  they  were  almost  exactly  the 
same.  And  just  when  the  women  were  giving  up  hope 
she  suddenly  spoke  decisively. 

"Yes.  Ill  do  it.  My  secretary  is  outside  in  the 
motor.  Call  her  in." 

"Jane,"  she  said  when  that  very  businesslike  and 
faded  young  woman  appeared,  "two  things.  One,  a 
list  of  all  the  women  who  met  that  little  working-girl  at 
my  house.  Two,  telephone  all  the  city  editors.  I  want 
to  give  out  a  statement,  a  personal  statement.  My 
house,  to-night.  Morning  papers.  You  can  use  the 
telephone  in  the  front  office.  That  will  do." 

Yetta  and  Mrs.  Van  Cleave  divided  the  first  column 
the  next  morning.  In  the  two  and  three  cent  papers 
Yetta  got  most  of  the  space,  in  the  one  cent  papers  the 
proportions  were  reversed.  But  Yetta's  story,  more  or 
less  diluted  with  descriptions  of  Mrs.  Van  Cleave's 
drawing-room  and  gown  and  diamond  tiara  —  she  had 
given  the  newspaper  men  a  few  minutes  as  she  was 
leaving  for  the  Opera  —  was  read  by  almost  everybody 
in  Greater  New  York.  Yetta  was  invariably  described 


THE  WORKHOUSE  189 

as  little,  in  several  cases  as  only  thirteen.  Pick- Axe 
was  ordinarily  spoken  of  as  an  ex-prize-fighter  —  a 
libel  on  the  profession,  which  can  at  least  boast  of  physi 
cal  courage. 

Among  others  who  read  the  story  was  the  Com 
missioner  of  Correction.  He  called  up  the  warden  of 
the  workhouse. 

"That  jackass,  Cornett,  has  stirred  up  hell  down  at 
Essex  Market.  Seen  the  papers?  Well,  there'll  be 
fifteen  hundred  reporters  bothering  you  this  morning, 
trying  to  interview  this  Ray ef sky  girl.  Don't  let  them. 
But  they'll  get  at  her  when  she  comes  out;  she'll  be 
telling  her  impressions  of  prison  life  to  everybody. 
Give  her  some  snap.  Feed  her.  Damn  her  soul, 
don't  give  her  no  chance  to  kick.  See  ?" 

It  was  about  nine  o'clock  when  this  message  crossed 
the  wire.  A  few  minutes  later  the  warden  entered 
the  women's  wing  of  the  workhouse.  There  were 
about  fifty  prisoners  on  their  knees,  scrubbing  the 
stone  floor. 

"YettaRayefsky." 

She  got  up  in  surprise  and  came  towards  him, 
wondering  what  new  thing  they  were  going  to  do  to 
her. 

"Know  anything  about  children?"  he  asked. 

Yetta  was  too  much  surprised  by  the  question  to 
answer. 

"Well,"  he  said,  "you  don't  look  like  you'd  cut  their 
throats.  My  wife  needs  a  nurse.  Come  on." 

"Ain't  you  got  any  clothes  that  fits  her?"  he  asked 
the  matron  at  the  door.  "Clean  ones.  Don't  want 
things  like  that  in  the  house.  Wash  her  up.  We  don't 
want  bugs.  And  send  her  over  right  away." 


190  COMRADE  YETTA 

"  Gee,"  the  matron  said  with  sudden,  cringing  respect. 
"  Why  didn't  you  tell  me  you  had  a  pull  ?" 

So  Yetta  was  taken  out  of  the  Inferno,  before  her 
tired  senses  had  fully  waked  up  to  its  horrors.  The 
warden's  house  was  outside  the  prison.  It  had  a 
pleasant  lawn,  close-clipped,  its  flower  beds  well  tended, 
for  the  labor  of  the  " trusties"  was  free.  There  was 
already  a  nurse  for  the  children,  and  Yetta  did  not  have 
anything  to  do.  The  yesterday's  storm  had  been  the 
end  of  winter,  and  an  almost  midsummer  heat  had  fallen 
on  New  York.  She  spent  most  of  her  time  on  a  rustic 
bench  under  a  great  elm.  There  was  a  fine  open  view 
across  the  busy  river  to  the  busier  city. 

The  real  nurse  was  snobbish  and  would  not  speak  to 
her,  which  saved  her  from  much  foolish  chatter.  No 
body  paid  any  attention  to  her  except  the  warden's 
three-year-old  boy,  who  continually  escaped  from  his 
nurse  and  tried  to  climb  into  Yetta's  lap.  They  gave 
her  good  meals  and  a  comfortable  bed.  It  was  some 
what  unkind  of  them  to  jerk  the  baby  out  of  Yetta's 
lap  whenever  he  found  his  way  there.  But  otherwise 
she  was  very  well  treated.  The  only  restrictions  they 
put  on  her  was  that  she  should  not  leave  the  lawn  and 
should  not  read  the  papers.  "It  would  give  her  a 
swelled  head,"  the  warden  said.  His  prohibition  had 
the  advantage  of  keeping  her  from  the  excitement  of 
contact  with  the  strike. 

Above  everything  else,  Yetta  needed  rest  and  quiet 
to  think.  The  first  day  she  dozed.  The  second  day 
her  mind  woke  up.  She  had  a  fear  that  she  would 
forget  something.  So  many  things  had  happened  in 
the  past  month.  Ten  days  seemed  to  her  a  limitless 
time,  so  she  began  at  the  beginning.  Her  earliest 


THE  WORKHOUSE  191 

recollections  were  of  the  dingy  little  book-store  and 
her  father.  The  morning  passed  in  rearranging  her 
memories  of  him.  When  they  called  her  for  supper,  she 
had  reached,  in  the  review  of  her  life,  Rachel's  first 
dance.  Afterwards  she  sat  in  the  little  dormer  window 
of  her  bedroom  and  looked  out  at  the  twilight  falling 
over  the  city;  she  watched  the  lights  on  the  river  and 
the  stars  in  their  courses  overhead  and  went  over 
her  acquaintance  with  Harry  Klein. 

She  had  learned  a  great  deal  during  this  month  out 
of  the  shop.  From  words  dropped  here  and  there,  from 
things  she  had  seen,  she  had  come  to  a  clearer  under 
standing  of  the  thing  she  had  escaped.  She  had 
thought  she  was  in  love  with  Harry  Klein  !  She  went 
to  sleep  realizing  how  hollow  had  been  her  conception 
of  love.  The  word  had  a  very  different  content  now 
that  she  had  seen  Walter  and  Mabel  together  and  had 
heard  the  gossip  of  the  girls.  The  thought  of  two 
such  people  being  in  love  seemed  very  wonderful  to 
her. 

After  breakfast  the  next  morning  she  took  her  seat 
again  in  the  shade  of  the  elm  tree  and,  with  her  chin 
in  her  hands,  pondered  over  the  strike.  She  had  a 
remarkable  memory  for  words  and  phrases.  She 
could  have  given  a  full  synopsis  of  all  the  speeches  she 
had  heard  in  that  month.  Most  of  the  people  who  had 
talked  at  the  meetings  had  tried  to  tell  what  the  strike 
meant.  She  went  over  the  various  and  often  contra 
dictory  explanations,  and,  supplementing  them  with 
her  own  experience  and  observations,  reached  an  inter 
pretation  of  her  own.  Much  of  it  came  as  a  direct 
inheritance  from  her  father.  The  two  speakers  who 
had  influenced  her  most  were  Longman  and  Braun. 


192  COMRADE  YETTA 

With  the  former  she  believed  that  all  those  who  loved 
liberty  were  under  a  sacred  obligation  to  struggle  for 
it.  And  Braun's  straightforward,  concise  statement 
of  social  organization  seemed  to  her  reasonable.  As 
soon  as  possible  she  wanted  to  get  a  chance  to  study 
Socialism. 

Meanwhile  the  storm  kicked  up  by  her  arrest  was 
growing  apace.  That  morning  the  papers  contained 
an  open  letter  which  the  Commissioner  of  Corrections 
had  addressed  to  the  ladies  of  the  Woman's  Trade 
Union  League.  He  had  been  forced  to  this  action, 
because  the  evening  papers  had  published  interviews 
with  other  strikers  who  had  been  in  the  workhouse. 
They  gave  impressive  details  of  the  nauseous  place,  of 
the  rank  food,  the  vermin,  the  dark  cells,  and  the  de 
based  associations.  The  Commissioner's  letter  was  a 
dignified  document.  It  had  been  written  by  his  secre 
tary.  In  a  sweeping  manner  he  denounced  the  accusa 
tions  made  by  the  strikers  as  malicious  libel  and  re 
ferred  the  ladies  of  the  Advisory  Council  and  the  public 
in  general  to  page  213  of  the  last  report  of  the  Prison 
Association,  which  gave  just  tribute  to  the  modern 
sanitation,  the  wholesome  dietary,  and  the  healthy 
regime  of  the  workhouse. 

"In  regard  to  the  case  of  Miss  Rayefsky,  about 
whom  this  agitation  has  centred,  the  Commissioner 
begs  to  point  out  that  he  has  no  manner  of  responsi 
bility  over  commitments.  It  is  not  within  his  province 
to  pass  judgment  on  the  decisions  of  the  courts.  He 
must  accept  whomsoever  is  committed  to  his  custody. 
In  reply  to  his  inquiry,  the  warden  of  the  workhouse 
informs  him  that,  instead  of  suffering  the  fantastic 
tortures  which  certain  hysterical  lawbreakers  have 


THE  WORKHOUSE  193 

tried  to  persuade  the  public  are  actualities  in  the  work 
house,  Miss  Rayefsky  has  been  detailed  to  the  work 
of  nurse  to  the  warden's  children,  and  is  living  —  prob 
ably  in  greater  comfort  than  she  ever  knew  before — as 
a  member  of  his  household. 

"As  the  Commissioner  does  not  care  to  ask  the 
public  to  take  his  word  in  preference  to  irresponsible 
newspaper  stories,  he  invites  the  Woman's  Trade 
Union  League  to  appoint  a  committee  to  visit  Miss 
Rayefsky  in  the  workhouse  and  report  to  the  public." 

While  Yetta  was  pondering  over  the  meanings  of 
strikes  and  industrial  warfare,  all  New  York  was  dis 
cussing  her  case  and  reading  what  various  society 
ladies  thought  about  the  way  their  pet  had  been 
treated.  Pick- Axe  lost  his  job  as  private  detective 
and  had  to  go  back  to  highway  robbery. 

After  lunch  Yetta  tackled  the  hardest  problem  of  all 
—  why  had  she  tried  to  kill  Pick- Axe  ?  Instinctively 
she  felt  that  Longman  would  understand.  But  neither 
Mabel  nor  Braun  would,  —  Braun  least  of  all.  Her  act 
did  not  fit  in  with  Socialism.  No  other  speakers  had 
urged  the  strikers  as  vigorously  as  the  Socialists  to 
abstain  from  violence  or  lawbreaking.  Longman  was 
not  the  only  one  who  would  understand.  There  was 
Casey,  the  secretary  of  the  Central  Federated  Union, 
and  the  men  of  the  " Pastry  Cooks'  Union."  She 
could  have  told  them  about  it  without  any  hesitancy. 
She  tried  for  some  minutes  to  decide  whether  her 
father  would  have  understood.  She  was  not  sure. 
She  wanted  to  judge  herself  justly  in  the  matter,  but 
try  as  hard  as  she  might,  she  found  it  impossible  to 
blame  herself  sincerely.  Her  speculations  were  inter 
rupted  by  Longman's  voice. 


19*  CO:MRADE  YETTA 

"What  are  you  thinking  about  so  hard?" 

She  jumped  up  in  surprise  to  see  that  Longman  and 
Mrs.  Karner  had  come  across  the  lawn  without  her 
hearing  their  approach.  The  warden  had  established 
himself  in  a  chair  where  he  could  watch  them. 

Mrs.  Karner  had  happened  to  be  in  the  office  when 
the  Commissioner  s  letter  arrived.  She  had  appointed 
herself,  together  with  Mabel  and  T^^t^n  the  com 
mittee  to  visit  Yetta.  They  had  notified  the  Commis 
sioner,  and  he  in  turn  had  warned  the  warden.  But 
just  as  they  were  about  to  start,  a  representative  of  the 
Association  of  Vest  Manufacturers  had  telephoned  to 
Mabel  for  a  conference.  It  was  too  important  to  miss. 
So  Mrs.  Karner  and  T^^pMrn  had  come  alone. 

Yetta  rushed  into  Mrs.  Karner's  arms  and  had 
hard  work  not  to  kiss  Longman.  She  had  not  realized 
that  she  was  lonely  until  she  saw  the  famiKM'  faces. 

"We've  only  got  fifteen  minutes,"  Longman  said. 
"So  we  must  get  down  to  business.  Did  they  bring 
you  to  the  warden's  house  at  once?" 

"No.  At  first  —  the  first  night  I  was  in  a  cell.  It 
wmB  about  nine  the  next  morning  the  warden  came  and 
took  me  out." 

"Just  as  I  was  telling  you,"  Longman  said  to  Mrs. 
Karner.  "When  they  read  the  newspapers,  they  got 
scared  and  made  an  exception  for  her.  Your  news 
paper  *ri*<M|>HTEr*  did  it." 

"What?" 

And  Mrs.  Karner  told  Yetta  all  about  it ;  how  angry 
her  friends  were  to  hear  of  her  being  accused  of  assault 
and  how  they  had  made  an  awful  row  in  the  papers, 
Yetta's  face  burned.  If  Longman  had  been  alone,  she 
would  have  told  him  the  truth  in  spite  of-  Braun's 


THE  WORKHOUSE  195 

interdiction.     But  she  was  not  sure  that  Mrs.  Karner 
would  understand. 

"It's  hard  on  you,  Yetta,"  Longman  said,  "to  be 
locked  up.  But  it's  great  business  for  the  strike.  It 
was  just  such  a  picturesque  outrage  as  this  that  was 
needed  to  attract  attention.  The  papers  are  full  of  it, 
and  everybody's  for  the  vest-makers.  The  girls  took 
a  collection  on  the  street  yesterday  and  got  nearly  a 
thousand  dollars.  The  bosses  are  scared.  Their  organi 
zation  is  breaking  up.  Two  of  the  shops  have  settled 
already.  It  looks  like  a  victory  all  round." 

For  ten  minutes  more  they  gave  her  the  hopeful 
news  and  loving  messages.  Then  they  saw  the  warden 
coming  across  the  grass. 

"Is  there  anything  you'd  like  to  have  me  send  you ?" 
Longman  asked. 

"I'd  like  some  books  that  tell  about  Socialism." 

"Warden,"  Longman  said  as  the  official  approached, 
"we've  enjoyed  this  visit  very  much.  We're  greatly 
obliged  to  you  for  your  especial  kindness  to  Mi.ss 
Ray ef sky.  Would  you  have  any  objection  to  my 
sending  her  some  books?" 

"She  can  read  my  books,  if  she  wants  to,"  he  said 
gruffly. 

"That's  very  kind,  I'm  sure.  But  she  wants  to 
study.  It's  some  books  on  economics  I  want  to  send 
her." 

"I've  no  objection,"  the  warden  said.  "Send  them 
to  me.  But  no  newspapers." 

Mrs.  Karner  kissed  her  again,  and  Longman  shook 
hands.  There  had  been  little  of  such  kindness  in 
Yetta's  life,  and  then*  visit  touched  her  deeply.  The 
thoughts  of  the  last  few  days  had  been  tinged  with 


196  COMRADE  YETTA 

bitterness.  It  was  softened  by  the  realization  that  she 
had  friends.  In  the  great  city  there  beyond  the  river 
were  people  who  cared  for  her.  And  what  wonderful 
people  they  were  ! 

The  Department  tug  swung  out  into  the  current, 
and  Yetta  saw  Mrs.  Karner  waving  her  handkerchief. 
She  jumped  up  to  wave  back. 

When  Mrs.  Karner  sat  down,  there  were  tears  in  her 
eyes. 

"Do  you  suppose  she'll  keep  the  faith?"  she  asked 
Longman. 

He  was  surprised  by  the  question.  He  had  never 
heard  Mrs.  Karner  use  the  word  " faith"  before.  She 
was  ordinarily  brilliantly  cynical. 

"I  don't  quite  understand." 

"Oh,  yes,  you  do.  Will  she  have  the  —  what  do 
the  long  distance  runners  call  it?  —  'wind,'  'staying 
power,'  to  keep  her  faith  in  revolt?  In  Socialism? 
It's  a  long  race,  this  life  of  ours,  and  an  obstacle 
race  every  foot  —  will  she  last?"  ...  In  a  moment 
she  went  on.  "Oh,  I  hope  she  will.  It's  beautiful! 
I  hope  she  won't  be  fooled  into  something  else.  Noth 
ing  on  earth  is  worth  so  much  as  faith  —  Why  don't 
you  say  something?" 

"I'm—" 

"Oh,  you're  surprised  to  hear  me  talk  like  this.  But 
don't  be  mean  and  rub  it  in,  even  if  I  have  sold  out. 
Once  upon  a  time  -  "  she  broke  off  suddenly  and  then 
began  again.  "Do  you  really  suppose  any  one  ever 
lived  who  has  not  had  some  youth  and  faith  ?  I  was  a 
girl  once.  Time  was  when  there  weren't  any  wrinkles 
on  my  soul.  Why  !  Once  upon  a  time,  I  was  going 
to  write  the  Great  American  Novel !  Sometimes  I 


THE  WORKHOUSE  197 

try  to  comfort  myself  by  saying  that  newspaper  work 
was  too  hard  for  a  woman.  I  ought  to  make  a  pil 
grimage  somewhere  —  on  my  knees  —  to  thank  the 
gods  I  wasn't  born  a  vest-maker.  I  did  not  have  the 
nerve  —  the  staying  power.  I  sold  out. 

"And  when  this  dinky  little  boat  gets  to  the  dock, 
I'll  ask  you  to  get  into  my  car  and  come  up  to  Sherry's 
for  tea.  It  will  save  me  from  going  to  that  great 
Social  Institution,  that  bulwark  of  America's  greatness 

—  The  Home.     I'd  invite  you  to  it,  only  it  would  seem 
like  an  insult.     There's  a  big  room  looking  out  on  the 
Drive  —  full    of   Gothic    furniture ;    some    of   it   was 
made  in  the  Middle  Ages  and  some  was  made  in  Milwau 
kee.     Bert  has  a  fad  for  Gothic.     Home's  a  sort  of 
Musee  du  Cluny.     This  isn't  my  day,  but  some  women 
are  sure  to  drop  in.     Some  in    skirts    and   some   in 
trousers,  and  they'll  talk  nonsense  and  worse.     And 
once  upon  a  time  I  was  a  real  woman,  and  worked  with 
real  men  and  had  thoughts.     It's  so  long  ago  I  almost 
forgot  about  it  till  this  little  vest-maker  came  along, 
with  her  big  eyes  and  her  faith." 

The  boat  bumped  against  the  pier. 

"  Don't  be  scared  at  my  melodramatics,"  she  said. 
"Come  up  to  Sherry's  and  I'll  tell  you  the  latest 
scandal.  Some  of  it  is  quite  untellable.  We'll  forget 
the  little  Jewess  with  her  disturbing  eyes.  Curses  on 
them  !  You  know,  looking  into  them  makes  me  under 
stand  why  they  crucified  Christ  at  such  an  early  age. 

—  Will  you  come  ?  " 

"Can  we  stop  on  the  way  and  get  those  books  for 
Yetta?" 

Late  that  night  Longman  took  out  one  of  his  printed 
sheets  of  foolscap  and  added  Mrs.  Karner's  credo  to  his 


198  COMRADE  YETTA 

collection.  It  was  the  first  of  his  questionnaires  he  had 
filled  out  since  he  had  begun  preparations  for  the  ex 
pedition  to  Assyria. 

The  next  morning  the  warden  handed  Yetta  a 
bundle  of  books.  On  the  fly-leaf  of  the  smallest  one — 
Thoreau's  Essays  —  Longman  had  written  :  "Thoreau 
lived  before  Socialism  commenced.  But  I  don't  think 
any  of  the  modern  writers  have  bettered  '  On  the  Duty 
of  Civic  Disobedience. ' ' 

In  the  six  days  which  were  left  of  her  sentence, 
Yetta  had  time  to  read  and  reread  all  the  books  Walter 
had  sent  her,  and  to  think  her  way  to  a  surer  footing  in 
Life. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

CARNEGIE   HALL 

THE  ten  days  when  Yetta  had  nominally  been  in 
prison,  but  was  really  resting  her  body  and  improving 
her  mind  on  the  warden's  pleasant  lawn,  had  been  great 
days  for  the  vest-makers. 

The  sudden  publicity  which  her  arrest  had  given 
their  Cause  turned  the  tide  in  their  favor.  None  of 
the  English  papers  gave  an  accurate  nor  intelligent 
account  of  the  struggle,  but  in  a  vague  way  the  gener 
ally  listless  public  came  to  realize  that  a  picturesque 
conflict  was  raging  on  the  East  Side  between  hundreds 
of  half-starved  women  and  the  Powers  of  Greed.  One 
could  hardly  call  it  sympathy,  for  sympathy  requires 
some  degree  of  understanding.  But  the  conviction 
became  widespread  that  it  was  not  a  "fair  fight. " 
The  pathos  writers  were  daily  turning  out  miniature 
Uncle  Tom's  Cabins.  And  the  society  writers  continued 
to  give  space  to  the  new  fad. 

The  strikers  might  have  won  considerable  concessions 
without  this  fortuitous  aid.  They  had  tied  up  their 
trade  for  five  weeks  at  the  height  of  the  rush  season. 
Their  enthusiasm  and  esprit  du  corps  had  grown  with 
hunger  and  persecution.  Even  the  biggest  bosses 
had  begun  to  wonder  if  it  would  not  be  cheaper  to 

199 


200  COMRADE  YETTA 

make  some  compromise.  But  certainly  the  strikers 
would  not  have  won  so  quickly  nor  so  largely  if  this 
unexpected  force  had  not  come  to  their  assistance. 
The  judge  in  Essex  Market  Court  no  longer  dared  to 
be  so  high-handed.  The  hired  thugs  were  afraid  that 
every  passer-by  was  a  reporter,  every  picket  a  society 
pet.  The  second  day  two  of  the  bosses  deserted  the 
Association  of  Vest  Manufacturers  and  settled  with 
their  forces.  Once  started,  the  stampede  became  gen 
eral  ;  every  day  more  shops  settled,  and  by  the  time 
Yetta  was  discharged  the  strike  was  practically  over. 

It  was  four  o'clock  of  a  Thursday  afternoon  when 
she  was  given  back  her  own  clothes  and  told  that  she 
was  free.  As  she  waited  on  the  Island  dock  for  the 
ferry  to  carry  her  across  an  unexpected  wave  of  fear 
came  over  her.  The  city  beyond  the  river  looked 
hostile  to  her.  Sooner  or  later  the  vest  strike  would 
end.  What  should  she  do  then?  She  knew  that  the 
" strike"  would  not  be  over  for  her  —  it  would  last  as 
long  as  she  lived.  But  where  was  she  to  live,  how  was 
she  to  gain  a  living  ?  How  could  she  get  the  chance 
to  study,  which  she  felt  to  be  her  greatest  need  ?  This 
last  was  what  troubled  her  most.  It  did  not  matter 
where  she  slept  nor  what  she  ate,  but  she  needed  the 
knowledge  which  is  power.  As  the  tug  fought  its 
way  against  the  current  and  the  city  came  closer  and 
closer,  it  looked  to  her  like  some  jealous  monster  which 
stood  guard  over  a  great  treasure.  Somehow  she 
must  do  battle  with  it,  for  the  prize  must  be  hers. 
She  felt  herself  very  weak,  and  her  armament  seemed 
pitiable. 

On  the  New  York  dock  she  found  Mabel  and  Walter 
and  Mrs.  Karner  waiting  for  her. 


CARNEGIE  HALL  201 

"Yetta,  Yetta,"  Mabel  laughed  and  cried,  with  her 
arms  about  her.  "  Remember  what  a  crowd  of  girls 
came  up  to  welcome  the  first  ones  who  came  out? 
Why  do  you  suppose  they're  not  here  to  welcome 
you  ?  They're  back  at  work.  We've  won  !  We've 
won!" 

Yetta  opened  her  big  eyes  very  wide,  but  her  heart 
was  too  jerky  for  her  to  speak.  Over  and  above  the 
joy  of  the  dear  victory  was  the  exhilaration  of  friend 
ship.  It  seemed  as  though  these  three  friends  had 
come  down  to  meet  and  arm  her  for  the  fight  for  the 
treasure.  Mabel's  embrace  was  like  armor,  Mrs. 
Karner's  kiss  was  a  helmet,  and  in  Longman's  frank 
grip  she  felt  a  sword  placed  in  her  hand. 

"Come  on,"  Mrs.  Karner  said.  " Climb  into  the 
motor.  You're  all  going  to  have  dinner  with  me. 
You've  got  to  speak  to-night,  child  —  the  biggest 
audience  you  ever  saw  —  Carnegie  Hall.  They  had 
lots  of  foolish  plans  to  bother  you,  but  I  said  'No  ! 
I'll  take  her  in  hand  and  see  that  she  gets  a  bath  and 
clean  clothes  and  a  good  meal  and  a  little  quiet  to 
think  out  her  speech.'  Climb  in." 

As  the  car  sped  across  the  city,  they  explained  to 
Yetta  that  Mrs.  Van  Cleave  had  donated  the  rent  of 
Carnegie  Hall  —  this  before  the  strike  had  been  won  — 
and  that,  as  all  the  arrangements  were  made,  they 
had  to  have  the  meeting  anyhow.  It  promised  to 
be  a  big  thing,  as  all  those  who  were  Mrs.  Van  Cleave's 
friends,  or  wanted  to  be,  had  scrambled  for  boxes, 
and  all  the  two  and  one  dollar  seats  had  been  sold. 

Mrs.  Karner  was  as  good  as  her  word.  Once  in  the 
imposing  house  on  Riverside  Drive,  she  left  Longman 
uncomfortably  balanced  on  a  Gothic  chair  in  the 


202  COMRADE  YETTA 

library,  and  she  and  Mabel  rushed  Yetta  into  a  bath 
even  more  dazzling  than  that  which  had  so  impressed 
her  in  the  Washington  Square  flat. 

"When  any  one  gets  herself  arrested  and  wins  a 
strike  all  by  herself,  and  is  going  to  make  a  speech  to 
the  Four  Hundred,  she  has  to  let  other  people  do 
things  for  her.  So  I  got  you  some  clothes." 

At  one  of  the  meetings  of  the  Advisory  Council 
Mrs.  Van  Cleave  had  said,  "Of  course  some  one  must 
see  to  it  that  she  is  decently  dressed."  Mrs.  Karner 
had  volunteered  to  attend  to  that,  and,  talking  it  over 
with  Mabel,  who  brought  some  of  Yetta's  scanty 
wardrobe  as  a  model,  they  had  arranged  a  simple, 
becoming  suit  of  soft  brown  corduroy. 

"If  you're  tired,  you  can  take  a  nap.  We'll  wake 
you  for  dinner." 

"No,"  Yetta  said.  "I  ain't  sleepy.  I  want  to 
hear  about  the  strike." 

So  they  arrayed  her  in  the  new  dress  and  fussed 
around  with  her  hair  and  at  last  brought  her  out  into 
the  library.  For  a  while  the  four  of  them  discussed 
the  strike. 

"Yetta,"  Mabel  asked,  changing  the  subject  ab 
ruptly,  "what  are  you  going  to  do  now?" 

They  had  to  wait  several  minutes  before  she  an 
swered. 

"I  don't  know.  I've  been  trying  to  think  about 
that.  There'll  be  more  strikes,  and  I  want  to  help  in 
them.  When  there  ain't  nothing  like  that  to  do,  I 
want  to  study.  I've  got  to  study  a  lot.  You  see  I 
ain't  been  to  school  since  I  was  fifteen,  and  you've  all 
been  to  college.  Of  course  I  can't  never  go  to  college, 
but  I'd  like  to  learn  all  I  can. 


CARNEGIE  HALL  203 

"I  don't  know  what  I'll  do.  I'd  like  to  keep  on 
being  business  agent  of  my  union,  if  they  ain't  elected 
nobody  else.  But  they  can't  pay  me  nothing.  I 
suppose  I'll  go  back  to  the  trade.  I  don't  know  no 
other  way  to  earn  money.  But  I'd  like  to  get  out  of 
it  so  I  could  study.  I  want  to  know  more,  so  I  can 
be  of  more  use.  Yes.  I've  got  to  study.  I'll  have 
to  think  about  it." 

"Well,  there  are  two  things  we've  got  to  suggest," 
Mrs.  Earner  said.  "I  suppose  I'd  better  tell  her  Mrs. 
Van  Cleave' s  offer  first.  You  see,  Yetta,  you've  made 
a  great  hit  with  her,  and  she's  got  oodles  of  money. 
She  thinks  you're  very  wonderful,  just  the  way  the 
rest  of  us  do"  —  somehow  Mrs.  Karner's  flattery  was 
so  kindly  and  laughing  that  it  hardly  made  Yetta  feel 
uncomfortable  —  "and  she  thinks  you  ought  to  have 
a  college  education.  Look  at  the  child's  eyes  open ! 
Yes.  It's  true.  She  wants  to  pay  all  your  expenses 
in  preparatory  school  and  Bryn  Mawr.  If  you  worked 
very  hard,  you  could  graduate  in  six  or  seven  years. 
Mrs.  Van  Cleave  really  wants  you  to  do  it.  Nobody 
asked  her  to  nor  suggested  it.  And  she's  very  generous 
when  she  gets  started.  She'll  give  you  a  fat  allowance, 
and  you  can  dress  just  as  well  as  the  other  girls.  Miss 
Train  and  I  have  both  been  to  college  and  we  know 
what  fun  it  is.  Dances  and  all  that.  And  it's  nice 
to  have  good  clothes.  It's  a  great  chance.  You've 
got  brains  and  lots  of  common  sense,  and  you  don't 
have  to  worry  about  any  of  the  other  girls  being  better 
looking  than  you  are.  You'll  probably  spend  your 
vacations  with  Mrs.  Van  Cleave.  You'll  like  as  not 
marry  a  mil  — " 

Yetta  knew  that  Mrs.  Karner  was  mocking. 


214  COMRADE  YETTA 

"Is  it  a  good  college  to  study?"  she  asked. 

The  two  women  were  silent.  Mabel  was  from 
Wisconsin  and  Mrs.  Karner  had  gone  to  Mount  Hoi- 
yoke.  Neither  thought  very  highly  of  the  college 
of  Mrs.  Van  Cleave's  choice.  Longman  answered  the 
question. 

"There  isn't  any  woman's  college  in  the  country 
which  has  a  higher  standard  of  scholarship.  It  is 
one  of  the  best  there  is  in  that  way.  If  yon.  want  to 
be  a  '  scholar/  if  you  want  to  go  in  for  Greek  or  mathe 
matics  or  one  of  the  sciences,  a  degree  from  Bryn 
Mawr  is  something  to  be  proud  of.  But  most  of  the 
girls  are  rich.  I  don't  mean  that  they  would  be  un 
kind  to  you.  With  Mrs.  Van  Cleave  back  of  you, 
you  don't  need  to  worry  —  they'd  probably  go  to  the 
other  extreme.  But  I  don't  believe  you'd  find  iiMMjl 
of  the  girls  —  or  many  of  the  faculty  —  interested  in 
the  problems  of  working  people.  Mrs.  Van  Cleave  is 
very  kind,  but  I  think  even  she  is  more  interested  in 
you  than  in  'strikes.'  As  I  say,  if  you  want  to  be  a 
'scholar,'  it's  a  good  place.  But  if  you  want  to  be  a 
labor  agitator,  if  you  want  to  fight  for  freedom,  I 
don't  think  Bryn  Mawr  would  help  you  much." 

The  excited  glow  in  Yetta's  eyes,  the  heightened 
color  of  her  cheeks,  died  out. 

"What's  the  other  offer?"  she  asked.  "You  said 
there  were  two." 

"Oh,  it  isn't  any  fairy  godmother  proposition,  my 
dear  Cinderella,"  Mrs.  Karner  said.  "Ifs  just  every 
day  work.  Nothing  so  fine  as  a  college  degree.  It's 
in  Miss  Train's  line,  so  she'd  better  tell  you." 

"No,  Yetta,"  Mabel  said.  "This  other  offer  is  a 
pretty  drab-colored  affair.  You  know  my  old  plan  to 


CARXEGIE  HALL  205 

try  to  ally  all  the  garment  workers,  vests  and  coats 
and  pants  and  cloaks  and  overalls,  all  in  one  big  fed 
erated  union  like  the  building  trades.  Well,  this 
vest  strike  has  been  so  successful,  I've  been  able  to 
interest  some  of  the  ladies  in  my  bigger  scheme  and 
they've  put  up  the  money  so  the  league  can  hire  a  new 
organizer.  It  isn't  as  much  as  you  could  earn  at  the 
machine,  but  it  is  enough  to  live  on.  We  all  think 
you'd  be  the  ideal  person.  You  could  keep  on  as 
business  agent  for  the  vest-makers.  I  know  they 
want  you.  and  even  if  they  can't  pay  you  anything, 
it  would  give  you  a  standing  with  the  Central  Feder 
ated  Union  and  even  among  the  unorganized  workers. 
They  all  know  about  how  this  strike  won.  and  there's 
sure  to  be  others  soon.  Of  course  there  would  be  lots 
of  work,  but  the  ladies  would  be  willing  to  let  you  have 
your  mornings  free  to  study.  It  isn't  like  going  to 
college.  But  if  you  really  want  to  educate  yourself, 
you  could  do  it.  We'll  all  help  you.  I  don't  want 
to  urge  you.  I  want  you  to  do  the  thing  you  think 
is  best  for  yourself.  And  Mrs.  Van  Cleave's  offer  is 
very  generous.  But  you  know  how  much  I  would 
like  to  have  you  working  with  me  in  the  League." 

Yetta  got  up  and  went  to  the  window.  She  knew 
that  ail  the  eyes  were  fixed  on  her  back.  She  knew 
what  they  were  thinking,  and  she  resented  it.  They 
had  all  had  a  college  education  given  them  as  a  matter 
of  course.  They  could  not  know  what  it  meant  to 
her.  She  could  not  get  her  wits  together  under  their 
silent  regard. 

"I  guess  I'll  go  and  lie  down  till  dinner,"  she  said. 
"I  must  think  —  about  to-night's  speech." 

When  she  had  disappeared,  Longman  broke  out. 


206  COMRADE  YETTA 

"Why  can't  you  women  be  frank  and  say  what  you 
think?  Mrs.  Karner's  proposal  is  better  than  Mrs. 
Van  Cleave's.  She'll  make  a  horrible  mistake  if  she 
ties  up  with  a  lot  of  millionnaire  snobs." 

" Mabel,"  Mrs.  Karner  said  solemnly,  "let  us  keep 
perfectly  still  and  listen  to  some  man-wisdom." 

In  the  face  of  this  jibe,  Longman  had  nothing  more 
to  say. 

"Does  the  lord  of  creation  think,"  Mrs.  Karner 
went  on,  "that  little  Yetta  Ray ef sky  is  only  deciding 
whether  she'll  go  to  college  or  not?" 

"Well,  for  God's  sake,  why  don't  you  try  to  help 
her  instead  of  making  it  harder  for  her  ?" 

"Has  the  philosopher  not  yet  discovered  that  some 
things  are  not  decided  until  one  decides  them  alone? 
Saint  Paul  had  to  go  off  to  Arabia.  Yetta's  gone  to 
my  guest-room.  You  can  help  a  person  pay  her  rent 
and,  if  you've  lots  of  tact  and  taste  and  insight,  you 
can  help  her  choose  a  becoming  hat,  but  you  can't 
help  a  person  to  do  the  brave  thing." 

"That's  witty,"  Longman  said  sourly.  "But  I 
didn't  happen  to  be  joking." 

"When  we  want  to  vote,  Mabel,  the  men  say  we 
have  no  sense  of  humor.  But  now  he  accuses  me  of 
joking  —  and  apparently,"  she  said  after  a  pause,  — 
"he  thinks  Yetta  doesn't  know  just  how  we  feel." 

The  subject  of  their  conversation  had  not  lain  down, 
she  had  curled  up  in  a  big  chair  drawn  up  before  the 
window,  looking  out  across  the  Hudson  to  the  setting 
sun  over  the  Palisades.  She  was  trying  desperately 
to  understand  the  fable  of  the  fox  and  the  grapes  after 
it  is  turned  inside  out.  The  enticing  bunch  was  in 
easy  reach.  Were  the  grapes  really  sour?  It  was 


CARNEGIE  HALL  207 

nearly  an  hour  before  they  called  her,  but  she  had  not 
yet  begun  to  think  out  what  she  should  say  at  Carnegie 
Hall. 

There  is  something  grotesque  about  most  large  pub 
lic  meetings.  Very  rarely  a  speaker  gets  the  feeling,  at 
his  first  glance  over  the  upturned  faces,  that  there  is 
some  cohesion  in  the  assembly,  some  unity.  He  re 
alizes  that  they  have  come  together  from  their  various 
walks  of  life,  their  factories  and  counting-houses,  be 
cause  of  some  dominant  idea.  It  is  then  his  easy  task, 
if  he  is  anything  of  an  orator,  to  catch  the  keynote  of 
the  assembly  and  carry  his  hearers  where  he  will. 

It  was  not  such  an  audience  which  gathered  that 
night  at  Carnegie  Hall.  After  Walter  had  given  a 
quick  glance  from  the  door  of  the  dressing-room  over 
the  mass  on  the  floor,  the  circle  of  boxes,  and  the  packed 
tiers  of  balconies,  he  turned  to  Mabel. 

"The  people  in  the  boxes,"  he  said,  "have  come  to 
stare  at  Yetta,  and  the  rest  to  stare  at  them/' 

"Don't  tell  her  that,  for  goodness'  sake,"  Mabel 
said. 

But  Yetta  saw  it  herself.  For  the  first  time  she  had 
a  sort  of  stage-fright  as  she  peeked  out  at  them.  The 
people  in  the  boxes  irritated  her.  She  had  talked  to 
that  kind  of  women  before,  and  they  had  only  given  a 
few  dollars.  She  wondered  how  many  of  them  had 
been  to  Bryn  Mawr. 

Mabel  called  Yetta  from  the  doorway  to  introduce 
the  Rev.  Dunham  Denning,  the  rector  of  Mrs.  Van 
Cleave's  church,  who  was  to  act  as  chairman.  And 
then  she  was  presented  to  an  honorable  gentleman 
named  Grossman,  who  had  once  been  a  cabinet  member 
and  had  gray  hair,  and  a  wart  on  his  nose.  These 


208  COMRADE  YETTA 

two  elderly  gentlemen  embarrassed  Yetta  very  much 
by  their  courtly  attentions.  She  did  not  have  the 
slightest  idea  what  to  say  to  them. 

When  at  last  the  speakers  stepped  out  on  the  plat 
form,  there  was  a  break  of  polite  hand-clapping  from 
the  auditorium  and  a  perfect  storm  of  applause  from 
the  back  of  the  stage.  Yetta  turned  in  surprise  to 
find  that  banks  of  seats  had  been  put  up  and  that  they 
were  closely  packed  with  her  own  vest-makers.  She 
had  not  seen  them  from  the  door  of  the  dressing-room. 
She  stopped  stock-still  with  tears  in  her  eyes.  Mabel 
had  to  pull  her  sleeve  to  get  her  to  come  forward  and 
acknowledge  the  greeting  of  the  main  audience. 

But  the  noise  behind  her  had  shaken  Yetta  out  of 
the  lassitude  which  the  sight  of  the  well-dressed,  com 
placent  people  of  the  boxes  had  given  her.  She 
must  do  her  best.  She  felt  herself  very  small  and 
the  thing  she  wanted  to  say  very  big.  She  pulled  her 
chair  close  to  Mabel's  and  slipped  her  hand  into  that 
of  her  friend. 

The  Rev.  Dunham  Denning  in  a  very  scholarly 
way  reminded  the  audience  of  several  things  which 
the  Christ  had  said  about  the  neighbors  and  which 
he  —  the  reverend  gentleman  —  feared  were  too  often 
forgot.  He  introduced  the  Honorable  Mr.  Grossman, 
who  was  known  to  all  for  his  distinguished  services 
in  the  nation's  business,  his  justly  famed  philanthropies, 
and  his  active  work  in  the  Civic  Federation,  which 
was  striving  so  efficiently  to  soften  the  bitterness  of 
the  industrial  struggle.  Mr.  Grossman  had  very  little 
to  say,  and  said  it  in  thundering  periods.  It  took  him 
nearly  an  hour. 

Then  it  was  Mabel's  turn.     She  spoke,  as  was  her 


CARNEGIE  HALL  209 

wont,  in  an  unimpassioned,  businesslike  way.  She 
outlined  the  work  of  the  organization  which  she  rep 
resented  and  spoke  of  the  vest-makers'  strike  as  an 
example  of  what  the  league  could  do  if  it  had  sufficient 
means. 

When  she  sat  down,  the  chairman  began  to  cast  the 
flowers  of  his  eloquence  at  Yetta' s  feet. 

"If  I  may  use  such  an  expression/'  he  said,  " while 
Miss  Train  has  been  the  brains  of  this  strike,  which 
we  have  gathered  here  to  approve,  the  next  speaker 
has  been  its  very  soul.  My  own  acquaintance  with 
her  is  of  the  slightest.  But  it  has  been  sufficient  to 
convince  me  past  any  doubt  that  the  charge  on  which 
she  was  sent  to  the  workhouse  was  an  infamous  libel. 
Who  can  look  at  her  sweet  face  and  believe  her  capable 
of  vulgar  assault?  But  you  are  to  have  the  oppor 
tunity  to  judge  for  yourself.  She  will  tell  us  of  this 
victory  to  which  she  has  so  glowingly  contributed,  and 
it  is  my  hope,  as  I  am  sure  it  is  that  of  this  vast  assembly, 
that  she  will  tell  us  about  her  own  experiences.  — 
Ladies  and  Gentlemen,  I  present  Miss  Yetta  Rayefsky." 

Yetta  squeezed  Mabel's  hand  and,  getting  up,  walked 
down  to  the  edge  of  the  platform.  She  wanted  to 
get  near  them  so  they  could  hear  her. 

The  laughter  and  the  conversation  in  the  boxes 
stopped  for  a  formal  round  of  applause.  But  as  they 
clapped  their  hands  and  stared  at  the  curiosity,  some 
thing  about  her  fragile  beauty  made  them  clap  more 
heartily.  At  close  range,  Yetta  looked  abundantly 
healthy.  But  far  away,  standing  alone  on  the  great 
platform,  she  seemed  frail  and  exotic.  The  two-dollar 
seats  took  their  cue  from  the  boxes  and  made  as  much 
noise  as  they  could.  The  gallery  and  the  mass  of 


210  COMRADE  YETTA 

vest-makers  behind  her  cheered  and  howled  and 
stamped  their  feet  without  thought  of  the  proprieties. 
And  Yetta  stood  there  alone,  the  blood  mounting  to 
her  cheeks,  looking  more  and  more  like  an  orchid,  and 
waited  for  the  storm  to  pass. 

"I'm  not  going  to  talk  about  this  strike,"  she  said 
when  she  could  make  herself  heard.  "It's  over.  I 
want  to  tell  you  about  the  next  one  —  and  the  next. 
I  wish  very  much  I  could  make  you  understand  about 
the  strikes  that  are  coming. 

"But  first  I  ought  to  say  a  few  words  to  you  for  my 
union.  We're  very  much  obliged  to  all  who  have  helped 
us.  We  couldn't  have  won  without  money,  and  we're 
thankful  to  everybody  that  gave  us  a  dime  or  a  penny. 

"It's  a  wonderful  victory  for  us  girls  and  women. 
We're  very  glad.  For  more  than  a  month  we've  been 
out  on  strike,  and  now  we  can  go  back  to  the  sweat 
shop.  Because  we've  been  hungry  for  a  month  — 
some  of  us  have  got  children  and  it  was  worse  to  have 
them  hungry,  —  because  a  lot  of  us  have  been  beaten 
up  by  the  cops  and  more  than  twenty  of  us  have  gone 
to  jail,  we  can  go  back  to  the  machines  now  and  the 
bosses  can't  make  us  work  no  more  than  fifty-six 
hours  a  week.  That's  not  much  more  than  nine 
hours  a  day,  if  we  have  one  day  off.  And  the  bosses 
have  promised  us  a  little  more  pay  and  more  air  to 
breathe,  and  when  we've  wore  ourselves  out  working 
for  them,  they  won't  throw  us  out  to  starve  so  long 
as  they  can  find  any  odd  jobs  for  us  to  do.  We've 
had  to  fight  hard  for  this  victory,  and  we're  proud  we 
won,  and  we're  thankful  to  all  you  who  helped  us. 
But  better  than  the  shorter  hours  and  everything  else 
is  our  union.  We've  got  that  now,  and  that's  the 


CARNEGIE  HALL  211 

most  important.  We  won't  never  be  quite  so  much 
slaves  again  like  we  was  before. 

"But  we've  won  this  strike  now,  so  we've  all  got  to 
think  about  the  next  one.  I  don't  know  what  trade 
it  will  be  in.  Perhaps  you  never  heard  of  the  paper- 
box  makers,  or  the  artificial-flower  makers,  or  the 
tassel  makers.  There's  men  with  families  in  those 
trades  that  never  earned  as  much  as  I  did  making 
vests.  And  the  cigar  makers  —  they're  bad  too.  And 
if  you  seen  the  places  where  they  bake  bread,  you 
wouldn't  never  eat  it.  It  don't  matter  which  way 
you  look,  the  people  that  work  ain't  none  of  them 
getting  a  square  deal.  They  ain't  getting  a  square 
deal  from  the  bosses.  They  ain't  getting  a  square  deal 
from  the  landlords.  And  the  storekeepers  sell  them 
rotten  things  for  food.  There's  going  to  be  strikes 
right  along,  till  everybody  gets  a  square  deal. 

"  Perhaps  there's  some  of  you  never  thought  much 
about  strikes  till  now.  Well.  There's  been  strikes 
all  the  time.  I  don't  believe  there's  ever  been  a  year 
when  there  wasn't  dozens  here  in  New  York.  When 
we  began,  the  skirt-finishers  was  out.  They  lost  their 
strike.  They  went  hungry  just  the  way  we  did,  but 
nobody  helped  them.  And  they're  worse  now  than 
ever.  There  ain't  no  difference  between  one  strike 
and  another.  Perhaps  they  are  striking  for  more  pay 
or  recognition  or  closed  shops.  But  the  next  strike'll 
be  just  like  ours.  It'll  be  people  fighting  so  they 
won't  be  so  much  slaves  like  they  was  before. 

"The  Chairman  said  perhaps  I'd  tell  you  about  my 
experience.  There  ain't  nothing  to  tell  except  every 
body  has  been  awful  kind  to  me.  It's  fine  to  have 
people  so  kind  to  me.  But  I'd  rather  if  they'd  try  to 


212  COMRADE  YETTA 

understand  what  this  strike  business  means  to  all  of 
us  workers  —  this  strike  we've  won  and  the  ones 
that  are  coming.  If  I  tell  you  how  kind  one  woman 
wants  to  be  to  me,  perhaps  you'll  understand.  You 
see,  it  would  be  fine  for  me,  but  it  wouldn't  help  the 
others  any. 

"Well.  I  come  out  of  the  workhouse  to-day,  and 
they  tell  me  this  lady  wants  to  give  me  money  to 
study,  she  wants  to  have  me  go  to  college  like  I  was  a 
rich  girl.  It's  very  kind.  I  want  to  study.  I  ain't 
been  to  school  none  since  I  was  fifteen.  I  guess  I  can't 
even  talk  English  very  good.  I'd  like  to  go  to  college. 
And  I  used  to  see  pictures  in  the  papers  of  beautiful 
rich  women,  and  of  course  it  would  be  fine  to  have 
clothes  like  them.  But  being  in  a  strike,  seeing  all 
the  people  suffer,  seeing  all  the  cruelty  —  it  makes 
things  look  different. 

"The  Chairman  told  you  something  out  of  the 
Christian  Bible.  Well,  we  Jews  have  got  a  story  too 
—  perhaps  it's  in  your  Bible  —  about  Moses  and  his 
people  in  Egypt.  He'd  been  brought  up  by  a  rich 
Egyptian  lady  —  a  princess  —  just  like  he  was  her 
son.  But  as  long  as  he  tried  to  be  an  Egyptian  he 
wasn't  no  good.  And  God  spoke  to  him  one  day 
out  of  a  bush  on  fire.  I  don't  remember  just  the  words 
of  the  story,  but  God  said:  'Moses,  you're  a  Jew. 
You  ain't  got  no  business  with  the  Egyptians.  Take 
off  those  fine  clothes  and  go  back  to  your  own  peo 
ple  and  help  them  escape  from  bondage.'  Well.  Of 
course,  I  ain't  like  Moses,  and  God  has  never  talked 
to  me.  But  it  seems  to  me  sort  of  as  if  —  during  this 
strike  —  I'd  seen  a  Blazing  Bush.  Anyhow  I've  seen 
my  people  in  bondage.  And  I  don't  want  to  go  to 


CARNEGIE  HALL  213 

college  and  be  a  lady.  I  guess  the  kind  princess 
couldn't  understand  why  Moses  wanted  to  be  a  poor 
Jew  instead  of  a  rich  Egyptian.  But  if  you  can  under 
stand,  if  you  can  understand  why  I'm  going  to  stay 
with  my  own  people,  you'll  understand  all  I've  been 
trying  to  say. 

"  We're  a  people  in  bondage.  There's  lots  of  people 
who's  kind  to  us.  I  guess  the  princess  wasn't  the  only 
Egyptian  lady  that  was  kind  to  the  Jews.  But  kind 
ness  ain't  what  people  want  who  are  in  bondage. 
Kindness  won't  never  make  us  free.  And  God  don't 
send  any  more  prophets  nowadays.  We've  got  to 
escape  all  by  ourselves.  And  when  you  read  in  the 
papers  that  there's  a  strike  —  it  don't  matter  whether 
it's  street-car  conductors  or  lace-makers,  whether  it's 
Eyetalians  or  Polacks  or  Jews  or  Americans,  whether 
it's  here  or  in  Chicago  —  it's  my  People  —  the  People 
in  Bondage  who  are  starting  out  for  the  Promised 
Land." 

She  stopped  a  moment,  and  a  strange  look  came  over 
her  face  —  a  look  of  communication  with  some  distant 
spirit.  When  she  spoke  again,  her  words  were  unin 
telligible  to  most  of  the  audience.  Some  of  the  Jewish 
vest-makers  understood.  And  the  Rev.  ; Dunham 
Denning,  who  was  a  famous  scholar,  understood.  But 
even  those  who  did  not  were  held  spellbound  by  the 
swinging  sonorous  cadence.  She  stopped  abruptly. 

"It's  Hebrew,"  she  explained.  "It's  what  my 
father  taught  me  when  I  was  a  little  girl.  It's  about 

the  Promised  Land  —  I  can't  say  it  in  good  English  — 
j » 

"Unless  I've  forgotten  my  Hebrew,"  the  Reverend 
Chairman  said,  stepping  forward,  "Miss  Ray ef sky 


214  COMRADE  YETTA 

has  been  repeating  God's  words  to  Moses  as  recorded 
in  the  third  chapter  of  Exodus.  I  think  it's  the  seventh 
verse :  — 

"  '  And  the  Lord  said,  I  have  surely  seen  the  affliction  of  my 
people  which  are  in  Egypt,  and  have  heard  their  cry  by  reason  of 
their  taskmasters ;  for  I  know  their  sorrows  ; 

"  '  And  I  am  come  down  to  deliver  them  out  of  the  hand  of  the 
Egyptians  and  to  bring  them  up  out  of  that  land  unto  a  good  land 
and  a  large,  unto  a  land  flowing  with  milk  and  honey.'  " 

"Yes.  That's  it,"  Yetta  said.  "Well,  that's  what 
strikes  mean.  We're  fighting  for  the  old  promises." 

"Pretty  little  thing,  isn't  she?"  a  blonde  lady  in 
Mrs.  Van  Cleave's  box  asked  her  neighbor. 

"Not  my  style,"  he  replied.  "Even  if  you  had  no 
other  charms,  if  you  were  humpbacked  and  cross 
eyed,  that  hair  of  yours  would  do  the  trick  with  me. 
Haven't  you  a  free  afternoon  next  week,  so  we  could 
get  married?" 

"I  didn't  know  old  Denning  was  so  snappy  with  his 
Hebrew,"  another  broke  in. 

"Which  reminds  me  of  a  story  —  " 

"Is  it  fit  to  listen  to  ?"  the  blonde  lady  asked. 

"Yes  —  of  course.     It's  about  a  Welsh  minister  — " 

But  the  lady  had  turned  away  discouraged,  to  the 
boredom  of  the  man  who  really  wanted  to  marry  her. 

But  perhaps  in  that  crowded  auditorium  there  may 
have  been  some  who  had  understood  what  Yetta  had 
been  talking  about. 

Later  in  the  evening,  when  she  was  standing  with 
Longman  on  the  deserted  stage,  waiting  for  Mabel, 
who  —  to  use  Eleanor's  expression  —  was  "sweeping 
up,"  he  asked  her  what  she  was  doing  the  next  day. 


CARNEGIE  HALL  215 

"I  want  you  to  have  dinner  with  me/7  he  said. 
"  Mabel  and  Isadore  Braun  are  coming.  And  if  it 
isn't  asking  too  much,  I  wish  you  could  give  me  some 
of  the  afternoon  before  they  come.  I'd  like  to  talk 
over  a  lot  of  things  with  you.  You  know  I'm  sailing 
the  day  after  to-morrow.  It's  my  last  chance  to  get 
really  acquainted  with  you." 

"Sure.  I'd  like  to  come,"  Yetta  replied.  "But 
where  are  you  going?" 

She  listened  in  amazement  to  his  plans.  She  had 
thought  he  was  going  to  marry  Mabel.  When  he  had 
left  them  at  the  door  of  the  flat,  Yetta  asked  her  with 
naive  directness  if  she  wasn't  engaged  to  Longman. 

"No,"  Mabel  laughed.  "Where  did  you  get  that 
idea?" 

"Why,  all  the  girls  think  you  are." 

"Well,  they're  all  wrong.     I'm  not." 

"And  aren't  you  in  love  with  him  ?" 

"Not  a  bit.  You  Little  Foolish,  can't  people  be 
good  friends  without  being  in  love?" 

Yetta  went  to  sleep  trying  to  think  out  this  prop 
osition.  She  hardly  remembered  the  choice  she  had 
made  between  college  and  work,  nor  the  strain  of  the 
great  meeting.  It  was  very  hard  to  believe  that  Mabel 
and  Walter  were  not  in  love. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

THE   OPERATING   ROOM 

WALTER'S  study  seemed  to  Yetta  an  ideal  room. 
There  was  no  appearance  of  luxury  about  it  —  nothing 
to  remind  one  by  contrast  of  the  hungry  people  out 
side.  There  were  no  " decorations/'  except  two  por 
traits  of  his  grandparents  and  a  small  reproduction 
of  one  of  the  great  cow-faced  gods  of  the  Haktites 
which  stood  on  the  mantelpiece  above  the  fireplace. 
The  rest  of  the  room  was  made  up  of  comfortable 
chairs,  a  well-padded  window-seat,  and  books.  The 
cases  were  full  and  so  was  the  table  and  so  were  some  of 
the  chairs  and  there  were  books  on  the  floor.  Knowl 
edge  was  a  goal  which  her  father  had  set  before  Yetta 
as  almost  synonymous  with  " goodness"  and  " happi 
ness."  It  was  a  thing  she  had  forgotten  about  in  the 
sweat-shop,  but  for  which  her  recent  experience  had 
given  her  an  all-consuming  hunger.  No  one  who  has 
been  "sent  to  college,"  who  has  had  an  education  thrust 
upon  him,  can  realize  how  much  she  venerated  books. 
When  Longman  brought  her  to  his  room,  it  seemed  to 
her  as  if  she  had  entered  the  home  of  her  dreams. 

The  greatest  thing  that  had  come  to  Yetta  in  the  new 
life  was  the  gift  of  friends.  In  the  days  since  her 
father's  death,  with  the  exception  of  the  few  weeks 
when  Rachel  had  given  her  confidences,  she  had  had 

216 


THE  OPERATING  ROOM  217 

only  loveless  relatives  and  shopmates.  And  now 
she  could  hardly  count  her  friends.  From  the  very 
first  she  had  given  Longman  the  niche  of  honor  in  this 
gallery.  The  reason  was  something  more  subtle  than 
his  dramatic  entrance  into  her  life.  She  seldom 
thought  of  him  as  her  rescuer.  But  she  felt  that  his 
regard  for  her  was  more  personal  and  direct  than  that 
of  the  others.  She  could  not  have  explained  it  co 
herently  to  herself,  but  she  felt  it  no  less  keenly.  Mrs. 
Van  Cleave  was  fond  of  her  because  she  had  eyes 
like  those  of  the  long-dead  daughter.  Mrs.  Karner 
was  attracted  to  her  because  she  typified  her  own 
lost  youth.  Isadore  Braun  and  Mabel  valued  her 
because  of  her  flaming  spirit  of  revolt. 

Over  on  "the  Island/'  the  warden's  little  three-year- 
old  son,  in  spite  of  her  prison  dress,  in  spite  of  the 
jealousy  of  his  own  nurse,  had  run  into  her  arms 
at  first  sight.  Instinctively  she  felt  that  Walter  liked 
her  in  a  similar  fashion.  If,  during  the  strike,  she  had 
sold  out,  turned  "scab,"  Braun  and  Mabel  would  no 
longer  have  been  her  friends.  But  Longman  would 
have  come  to  her  in  his  gentle,  lumbering  way  and 
asked  her  about  it.  He  might  have  been  disappointed, 
even  angry,  but  still  he  would  have  been  her  friend. 

Yetta  wanted  to  begin  at  once  with  some  questions 
about  Socialism. 

"You'd  better  save  them  till  Isadore  and  Mabel 
come,"  Longman  laughed.  "He's  got  all  the  answers 
down  by  heart  —  the  orthodox  ones.  And  Mabel 
isn't  a  Socialist.  I'm  neither  fish,  flesh,  nor  good  red 
herring.  It  will  start  a  beautiful  shindy  if  you  spring 
those  questions  to-night." 

He  told  her  about  his  projected  book  on  Philosophy, 


218  COMRADE  YETTA 

and  how  he  would  like  to  add  her  credo  to  his  col 
lection.  The  big  scope  of  the  idea  caught  her  fancy, 
and  she  said  she  was  willing. 

It  was  slow  work  at  first.  The  earlier  questions  on 
his  list  led  her  into  unfamiliar  fields.  She  had  never 
troubled  her  mind  over  metaphysics.  She  was  not 
sure  what  kind  of  a  god  she  believed  in  —  nor  whether 
It  really  ought  to  be  called  "God."  She  had  given 
no  thought  to  the  question  whether  this  is  the  best 
or  worst  possible  world.  The  prophecies,  which  her 
father  had  loved  so  much,  inclined  her  strongly  to  the 
idea  that  it  might  be  made  a  better  one.  But  she  had 
never  even  tried  to  determine  whether  the  Universe 
is  an  elaborate  and  precise  mechanical  instrument, 
a  personally  conducted  puppet  show,  or  a  roulette 
wheel.  Her  inability  to  answer  these  questions  — 
and  the  way  he  put  them  made  them  seem  very  im 
portant  —  shamed  her.  He  seemed  to  be  sounding 
the  depths  of  her  ignorance.  Did  she  believe  in  a 
future  life  ?  She  threw  up  her  hands. 

" I  don't  know." 

"  Nobody  knows.  It's  a  question  of  belief.  You 
loved  your  father  very  much,  and  when  you  were  a 
little  girl  he  died.  Was  that  the  end  of  him?" 

She  shook  her  head.     He  waited  patiently  for  words. 

"No.  It  wasn't  the  end  of  him.  Anyhow  the 
memory  lasts." 

"Do  you  ever  talk  to  him  now?" 

"Sometimes.     I  pretend  to." 

"Is  it  as  good  as  if  he  was  really  here?" 

"Almost  —  sometimes." 

"Well.  After  you  die  do  you  think  you'll  meet 
him?" 


THE  OPERATING  ROOM  219 

Yetta  curled  herself  up  a  little  tighter  on  the  window- 
seat,  her  forehead  puckered  into  deep  wrinkles. 

"Yes,"  she  said  after  a  while.  "I  think  —  once, 
anyhow  — I'll  have  a  chance  to  talk  to  him  — tell 
him  everything  and  ask  him  what  was  right  and  wrong 
—  and  he'll  tell  me." 

." How  will  he  look?" 

"I  don't  know.     But  I'll  know  it's  him." 

The  ordeal  became  easier  as  the  questions  began  to 
deal  with  more  mundane  problems.  But  before  long 
they  got  into  deep  water  again. 

"Do  you  believe  that  honesty  is  the  best  policy?" 

That  took  a  lot  of  thinking  and  brought  back  the 
wrinkles. 

"Honesty  — telling  the  truth,"  she  said  at  last. 
"I  guess  it's  the  best  something,  but  it  ain't  always 
the  best  policy.  If  I  hadn't  perjured  myself,  we 
wouldn't  have  won  this  strike." 

"What?" 

"I  don't  mind  telling  you.  I  lied  in  court.  I 
swore  I  didn't  hit  Pick- Axe;  but  I  tried  to  kill  him." 

Longman  whistled  softly. 

"Tell  me  about  it." 

When  she  had  told  him  all,  —  what  Pick-Axe  had 
said  and  done,  how  suddenly  blind  rage  had  overcome 
her,  how  at  length  Braun  had  persuaded  her  to  lie,  — 
she  asked  him  if  he  thought  honesty  would  have  been 
the  best  policy  in  this  case. 

"I'm  asking  questions  this  afternoon,  not  answering 
them,"  he  said  gravely.  "This  interests  me  a  lot. 
So  you  think  it's  sometimes  right  to  lie  in  a  good  cause." 

"No,"  she  said  quickly.  "I  don't  think  it's  never 
right  to  lie.  But  I  guess  sometimes  you've  just  got 


220  COMRADE  YETTA 

to.  If  I'd  told  the  truth,  they'd  have  sent  me  to  prison, 
instead  of  the  workhouse.  I  wouldn't  have  cared. 
It  ain't  nice  to  lie,  and  like  Mr.  Thoreau  says,  there's 
worse  things  than  being  in  the  worst  prison.  But  it 
would  have  been  awful  for  the  others.  Just  because 
I  told  the  truth  all  the  papers  would  have  lied  and  said 
all  the  girls  were  murderers.  We'd  have  lost  the 
strike.  I'd  have  felt  better  if  I'd  told  the  truth. 
But  there's  more  than  two  thousand  girls  in  our  trade. 

"It's  like  this,  I  think.  If  you  make  up  your  mind 
that  something  is  good,  you  got  to  fight  for  it ;  you 
can't  be  afraid  of  getting  beat  up,  or  arrested,  or  killed, 
and  you  can't  be  afraid  of  hurting  your  conscience 
either.  Mr.  Thoreau  has  got  an  essay  about  John 
Brown  and  how  he  fought  to  free  the  black  slaves. 
Well,  suppose  somebody 'd  come  to  him  and  told  him 
how  he  could  do  it,  if  he'd  commit  a  big  sin  himself. 
I  guess  he'd  have  done  it.  If  he'd  said,  '  You  can  beat 
me  or  put  me  in  prison  or  hang  me  for  those  black 
men,  but  I  won't  sin  for  them,'  he'd  have  been  a  coward. 
I'd  rather  go  to  prison  than  tell  a  lie  like  I  done.  But 
I  ain't  afraid  to  do  both." 

She  had  sat  up  stiffly  on  the  window-seat  while  she 
was  trying  to  say  all  this.  Again  she  curled  up.  She 
watched  Walter,  as  he  sat  there  in  deep  thought,  ab 
sent-mindedly  drumming  on  the  table  with  his  pencil. 
She  could  not  have  talked  like  this  to  any  one  else  in 
the  world.  She  had  expressed  herself  poorly ;  in  her 
intensity  she  had  slipped  back  into  her  old  ways  of 
speech,  but  she  knew  he  did  not  care  about  doubled 
negatives,  nor  "ain't's."  She  knew  he  had  understood. 
And  just  when  she  had  found  this  wonderful  friend, 
she  was  losing  him.  He  was  going  away  in  the  morn- 


THE  OPERATING  ROOM  221 

ing  for  years  and  years.  Central  Asia  sounded  far 
away  and  dangerous.  Something  might  happen  to 
him  and  he  never  come  back.  She  was  afraid  she 
would  cry  if  she  kept  silence  any  longer. 

"What  do  you  think?"  she  asked. 

"I  was  wondering  if  you  are  afraid  of  anything." 

"Oh,  yes.     Lots  of  things." 

"For  instance?" 

"Well,  I'm  afraid  of  the  Yetta  Rayefsky  who  tried  to 
kill  Pick-Axe.  And  I'm  afraid  of  myself  for  not  blam 
ing  her  for  it.  And  I'm  afraid  of  being  useless.  I'm 
afraid  of  waste.  I'm  afraid  —  more  than  anything 
else  — of  ignorance."  She  sat  up  again.  "Yes. 
That's  the  worst  thing  the  bosses  do  to  us  —  they  keep 
us  ignorant.  I  don't  think  even  you  can  understand 
that.  You've  had  books  all  your  life.  You've  been  to 
school  and  college,  you're  a  professor,"  -the  awe 
grew  in  Yetta's  voice,  —  "your  room  is  full  of  books. 
I  sit  here  and  look  at  them  and  try  to  think  what  it 
must  mean  to  know  all  that's  in  so  many  books  and  I 
want  to  get  down  on  my  knees,  I'm  so  ignorant." 

"Good  God  !  Yetta,"  he  said  savagely,  jumping  up. 
"Don't  talk  like  that.  I'm  not  worth  your  stepping 
on." 

He  came  over  and  took  her  hand  and  surprised  her 
by  kissing  it  humbly. 

"I'm  going  away  to-morrow  —  for  a  very  long 
while  —  arid  I  want  to  tell  you,  before  I  go,  that  you're 
a  saint,  a  heroine.  Did  books  mean  so  much  to  you  ? 
And  you  decided  to  work  instead  of  going  to  college  ? 
Books?"  He  grabbed  one  from  the  table  and  hurled 
it  violently  across  the  room.  "  Books  ?  They  are 
only  paper  and  ink  and  dead  men's  thoughts.  Truth 


222  COMRADE  YETTA 

and  wisdom  don't  come  from  books.  They  can't 
teach  you  those  things  in  college.  Yes.  I've  had 
books  all  my  life.  I  live  with  them."  He  stamped 
up  and  down  and  shook  his  fists  at  the  unoffending 
shelves.  "If  I  know  anything  Real,  if  I've  got  the 
smallest  grain  of  wisdom,  I  didn't  get  it  from  them. 
There's  only  one  teacher  —  that's  Life,  and  before  you 
can  learn  you've  got  to  suffer.  I  don't  know  much 
because  things  have  been  easy  for  me.  How  old  are 
you?  Nineteen?  Well,  I'm  over  thirty.  You  talk 
about  getting  down  on  your  knees  to  me  !  Good  God  ! 
I've  ten  years  start  and  every  advantage,  but  I  don't 
know  —  Capital  K-N-O-W  —  as  much  as  you.  And 
good?  I  ought  to  ask  your  pardon  for  kissing  your 
hands.  I'm  no  good  !  God  !  I  want  to  break  some 
thing  !" 

He  looked  around  savagely  for  something  which 
would  make  a  great  noise.  But  he  suddenly  changed 
his  mind,  and  pulling  up  a  chair  to  the  window-seat, 
where  Yetta  was  sitting  bolt  upright,  he  began  again 
in  a  quieter  tone. 

"  Yetta,  I'm  a  lazy,  self-indulgent  imbecile.  I've 
never  done  anything  in  all  my  life  that  I  didn't  want  to 
do.  I've  never  sacrificed  anything  for  any  cause,  not 
my  easy-chairs,  nor  my  pipe,  nor  my  good  meals,  noth 
ing.  Nothing  but  automobiles  and  yachts  which  I 
didn't  want.  God  gave  me  a  brain  which  I  am  too 
lazy  to  use.  And  besides  my  general  uselessness  and 
selfish  waste,  I'm  a  coward.  Why  am  I  going  off  to 
Persia  ?  Is  it  because  I  think  it  will  ever  do  anybody 
any  good,  ever  make  life  sweeter  or  finer  for  any  one, 
to  have  me  decipher  the  picture  puzzles  of  the  people 
who  worshipped  that  stupid-faced  cow  on  the  mantel- 


THE  OPERATING  ROOM  223 

piece?  No.  I'm  not  that  foolish.  Is  it  because  I 
don't  know  what  I  might  do,  if  I  was  as  wise  as  you 
are  —  wise  enough  to  know  that  we  must  give  our 
lives  to  win  our  souls  ?  No  !  I  know  that  just  as  well 
as  you  do,  Yetta.  But  I'm  a  coward.  I'm  running 
away,  because  I'm  afraid  of  life." 

He  jumped  up  again  and  began  to  pace  the  room. 

"Oh,  well !"  he  groaned.  " Enough  heroics  for  one 
afternoon.  But  don't  let  books  hypnotize  you,  Yetta. 
Schopenhauer  said  once  that  the  learning  of  the  West 
crumples  up  against  the  wisdom  of  the  East  like  a 
leaden  bullet  against  a  stone  wall.  There's  nothing  in 
books  but  'learning.'  And  you've  got  some  of  the 
Eastern  wisdom,  Yetta.  It's  part  of  your  Semitic 
heritage.  Treasure  it.  Don't  ever  let  books  come 
between  you  and  your  intimacy  with  life.  One  pulse 
beat  of  a  live  heart  is  worth  all  the  printed  words  in  a 
thousand  books.  I  — " 

But  he  interrupted  himself  and  sat  down  gloomily 
and  looked  out  over  Yetta  —  who  had  curled  up  once 
more  —  at  the  budding  green  tree  tops  of  Washington 
Square. 

His  tirade  had  disturbed  Yetta  much  more  than  he 
dreamed.  It  was  not  until  long  afterwards  that  she 
was  to  bring  out  his  words  from  the  treasure-house  of 
her  memory  and  come  to  understand  what  he  meant 
by  all  his  talk  of  Knowledge  and  Wisdom.  She  would 
never  think  as  lightly  of  book  learning  as  he  did.  She 
even  less  appreciated  his  ardently  expressed  admiration 
of  her,  and  his  self-condemnation.  It  was  his  pain 
which  impressed  her.  He  had  fallen  from  his  godlike 
majesty.  He  was  no  longer  a  calm-browed  Olympian, 
who  deigned  to  let  her  drink  from  the  fountain  of  his 


224  COMRADE  YETTA 

wisdom.  He  was  just  a  simple  man,  who  suffered. 
And  so  Yetta  began  to  love  him. 

In  the  wonder  of  it  she  forgot  that  he  was  going  away. 

"Yetta,"  he  said  abruptly.  "Where  are  you  plan 
ning  to  live  ?  Are  you  going  to  stay  on  with  Mabel 
and  Miss  Mead?" 

"Why,  no,"  she  rushed  dizzily  down  through  the 
cold  spaces  which  separate  Dreamland  from  New  York 
City.  "I  —  I  don't  suppose  so.  I'll  find  a  room  some 
where.  On  the  East  Side,  I  guess." 

"That's  not  a  good  plan,"  he  said  in  a  businesslike 
tone,  for  in  spite  of  all  he  had  been  saying  about  heart 
beats,  he  did  not  suspect  the  disturbing  rate  of  Yetta' s 
pulse.  "The  intellectual  life  on  the  East  Side  is  too 
feverish.  You'll  get  into  their  very  bad  habit  of  all- 
night  discussions,  which  lead  only  to  brain-fag.  And 
besides  you'd  be  living  too  near  your  work.  You're 
going  to  study,  and  you'll  need  a  place  where  you'll  be 
undisturbed.  I've  got  a  suggestion.  I  think  it  would 
be  good  for  you ;  it  certainly  would  be  a  favor  for  me. 
Why  not  live  here  ?  I've  got  a  long  lease  on  the  place. 
I  wouldn't  want  to  give  it  up,  even  if  I  could.  I'd 
been  planning  to  leave  the  key  with  Mrs.  Rocco  and 
have  her  come  in  once  a  month  to  air  the  rooms  and 
chase  the  moths.  Then  I  was  going  to  pay  one  of  the 
stenographers  up  at  the  University  to  attend  to  my 
mail.  There  are  a  few  bills  coming  in  every  month, 
and  the  letters  must  be  forwarded  to  me.  Not  half  an 
hour's  work  a  week,  but  somebody's  got  to  do  it.  If 
you  would  care  to,  it  would  save  me  a  little  expense, 
and  you'd  save  room  rent.  It's  a  good  place  to  study 
—  better  than  the  East  Side.  And  some  of  the  books 
are  worth  reading.  What's  the  matter?" 


THE  OPERATING  ROOM  225 

"Everybody's  so  kind  to  me,"  Yetta  said,  blinking 
her  eyes  to  drive  away  the  tears. 

"This  isn't  kindness/'  he  protested.  "It  will  save 
me  about  ten  dollars  a  month." 

Taking  her  silence  for  consent,  he  went  on  to  explain 
to  her  how  she  was  to  open  the  letters  and  mail  a  printed 
card  explaining  his  absence  to  the  writer  and  every 
week  forward  the  bundle  of  mail  to  the  French  Lega 
tion  in  Teheran.  And  then  he  explained  the  money 
matters,  how  she  was  to  pay  the  rent  and  his  subscrip 
tions  to  various  learned  and  philanthropic  societies  and 
so  forth. 

All  the  while,  Yetta,  curled  up  on  the  window-seat, 
was  trying  to  realize  how  very  empty  her  life  would  be 
after  he  left.  It  would  at  least  be  some  comfort  to 
live  here  in  his  room  with  his  ghost. 

While  he  was  still  explaining  the  details  about  his 
mail  and  the  bank  account  he  would  open  in  her  name, 
a  couple  of  waiters  arrived  laden  with  linen  and  dishes. 
They  were  from  the  Lafayette,  where  Walter  was  a 
regular  patron.  He  knew  the  chef  and  the  g argons  by 
their  first  names  and  they  had  laid  themselves  out  to 
make  his  farewell  dinner  memorable.  The  books  and 
papers  on  the  table  were  piled  on  the  floor.  And  just 
as  one  waiter  was  giving  a  last  pat  to  the  cloth  and  the 
other  was  lighting  the  candles,  Mabel  and  Isadore 
arrived. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 


WALTER'S  FAREWELL 

MABEL  had  come  to  the  dinner  with  some  reluctance. 
She  feared  that  the  farewell  might  take  too  personal  a 
line  for  pleasure.  Walter's  heart  was  so  full  of  bitter 
ness  that  he  was  glad  when  things  went  to  the  other 
extreme  and  turned  into  a  celebration  of  the  strike 
victory. 

When  at  last  the  waiters  had  removed  the  debris  of 
the  feast,  and  Walter  was  nursing  the  coffee  urn,  Mabel 
and  Isadore  began  to  discuss  Yetta's  plans.  They  had 
a  great  deal  to  say  about  her  work  in  trying  to  ally  the 
garment  trades.  But  Walter,  when  he  had  distributed 
the  coffee,  broke  into  the  conversation  abruptly. 

"You  people  seem  to  think,"  he  challenged  them, 
"that  Yetta's  principal  job  is  to  organize  the  garment 
workers." 

"Well,  isn't  it?"   Mabel  asked. 

"No  !  And  I  hope  she  won't  let  you  two  bluff  her 
into  thinking  it  is.  Her  main  job  for  the  next  few 
years  is  study.  The  garment  workers  will  be  organized 
and  reorganized  fifty  times  before  they  get  a  definite 
formation.  She's  only  one  opportunity  to  form  her 
intellect.  It  must  last  her  all  her  life.  It's  more  im 
portant  than  this  work  you  talk  about  because  it's  to 

226 


WALTER'S  FAREWELL  227 

be  the  basis  of  the  bigger  jobs  to  come.  All  the  time 
she's  going  to  be  torn  by  what  looks  like  conflicting 
duties.  Every  day  she'll  wake  up  with  the  feeling 
that  there's  something  she  can  do  which  would  or 
might  help  in  this  immediate  campaign.  The  tempta 
tion  to  give  all  her  time  to  the  union  work  is  the  worst 
one  she'll  have  to  face.  If  she  yields  to  it,  she'll  regret 
it  all  her  life.  Three  years  hence  the  work  she  did  in 
the  mornings  will  look  very  small  indeed  and  the  study 
she  neglected  will  look  very,  very  big. 

"When  you  talk  about  'sweat-shops,'  Mabel,  you 
curse  the  bosses  for  robbing  the  girls  of  leisure  and  all 
chance  of  culture.  Watch  out  that  you  don't  ' sweat' 
Yetta,  that  you  don't  let  her  ' sweat'  herself.  It's 
criminal  nonsense  to  talk  work,  work,  work.  Plenty 
of  people  will  be  saying  that  to  her.  I  think  she's  got 
sense  enough  to  keep  her  head,  but  you  who  are  her 
friends  ought  to  be  telling  her  study,  study,  study." 

"  You're  right,  Walter,"  Mabel  said  with  unusual 
humility. 

"What  we  ought  to  do,"  he  went  on,  "is  to  outline 
a  course  of  study  for  her.  What  do  you  suggest, 
Isadore?" 

"We've  just  published  a  new  pamphlet  which  out 
lines  a  course  of  reading,"  he  said.  "It's  called 
'What  to  read  on  Socialism." 

"That's  a  fine  idea  of  a  liberal  education."  Mabel 
snorted.  "She  isn't  going  to  be  a  Socialist  spell 
binder.  Her  job's  with  the  unions.  The  Webbs'  In 
dustrial  Democracy  would  help  her  a  lot  more  than  your 
Socialist  tracts." 

"It's  just  as  iniquitous  to  sweat  her  intellect  as  her 
body,"  Longman  groaned.  "Can't  you  two  blithering 


228  COMRADE  YETTA 

idiots  realize  that  before  you  read  any  of  these  books 
you  read  hundreds  of  others,  studied  for  years?  I 
hope  she  won't  specialize  —  in  her  study  —  on  Social 
ism  or  trade-unions,  either,  for  several  years.  She 
needs  to  keep  her  mind  open  and  absorb  a  background. 
She  ought  to  read  Westermarek's  History  of  Human 
Marriage  before  she  tackles  Bebel's  Woman.  She 
ought  to  read  Lecky  and  Gibbon  and  John  Fiske  and 
Michelet  and  a  lot  of  astronomy  and  geology  and 
physics  and  biology  —  a  person's  an  ignoramus  to-day 
who  hasn't  a  broad  knowledge  of  biology  —  and  she 
ought  to  know  something  about  psychology  before  she 
tackles  the  Webbs.  She  ought  to  put  in  some  time  on 
pure  literature.  You  people  are  thinking  about  Yetta 
Rayefsky,  the  labor  organizer  of  the  next  few  years. 
Well,  I  hope  she's  going  to  live  still  three  score  years 
and  more  than  ten.  It's  going  to  do  her  more  good  to 
read  Marcus  Aurelius  than  Marx  and  Engels.  She 
wants  to  know  something  of  the  traditions  of  the  race, 
the  great  men  of  the  past,  Homer  and  Shakespeare  and 
Rabelais  and  Swift.  And  above  all  she  needs  to  know 
the  ideas  of  our  own  times,  Ibsen  and  Tolstoi,  Shaw 
and  Anatole  France.  She'll  pick  up  the  Socialist  and 
trade-union  dope  as  she  goes  along.  It's  the  back 
ground  we,  her  friends,  can  give  her." 

And  so  for  an  hour  or  more  they  squabbled  over  a 
large  sheet  of  paper  and  at  last  evolved  a  course  of 
reading  for  her.  There  were  to  be  two  mornings  a 
week  to  natural  science,  two  to  history,  two  to  social 
science  and  psychology,  and  one  to  literature.  Yetta 
sat  back  and  listened  to  it  all,  very  much  impressed  by 
the  way  these  three  intellectual  giants  hurled  at  each 
other's  heads  the  titles  of  books  of  which  she  had  never 


WALTER'S  FAREWELL  229 

heard.  There  was  indeed  very  much  for  her  to  learn. 
Mabel  generally  concurred  in  Walter's  suggestions,  but 
Isadore  doggedly  insisted  that  more  Socialist  matter 
should  be  included.  He  was  especially  rabid  on  the 
question  of  history. 

"  What's  the  use  of  learning  a  lot  of  rot  you've  got 
to  unlearn?  Why  read  Michelet  and  Carlyle  on  the 
French  Revolution?  These  old  idealists  did  the  best 
they  knew  how.  Carlyle  really  thought  Mirabeau 
made  the  Revolution  and  Michelet  thought  it  was 
Danton.  But  nobody,  not  even  the  antisocialists, 
believes  in  the  ' great  man  theory'  any  more.  All  our 
history  has  got  to  be  rewritten  from  the  modern  point 
of  view.  It  hasn't  been  done  yet,  and  the  only  way  to 
get  things  straight  is  to  saturate  yourself  in  the  social 
idea,  get  it  into  your  head  that  this  is  a  world  of  eco 
nomic  classes,  not  individuals,  then  you  can  read  any 
thing  without  danger  —  you  know  how  to  discount  it. 

" You  talk  about  ' background'  —  well,  that's  what 
I'm  insisting  on.  Let's  get  it  right.  It's  the  lack  of  a 
deeply  social  background  that  makes  so  many  of  our 
well-intentioned  modern  reformers  sterile.  People  still 
believe  that  great  changes  can  be  made  by  strong  in 
dividuals.  A  lot  of  peace  advocates  believe  that  Mr. 
Carnegie  is  going  to  abolish  war.  But  most  seem  to 
think  that  things  can  be  reformed  piecemeal.  This 
crusade  against  infant  mortality  is  a  good  example. 
Its  ideal  is  fine.  But  it  tries  to  isolate  it  from  all  the 
rest  of  the  social  problem  and  cure  it  alone.  It  can't 
be  done.  It's  tied  up  with  rotten  tenements  and  land 
lordism,  with  bad  milk  and  commercialism,  with  poor 
wages  and  industrialism.  Just  like  war,  it  is  a  natural, 
inevitable  part  of  capitalism. 


230  COMRADE  YETTA 

"It's  the  same  thing  with  the  trade-unions.  They 
try  to  separate  their  economic  struggle  with  their 
bosses  from  the  political  aspect  of  the  social  problem, 
and  it  can't  be  done.  The  unionists  make  a  pitiful 
showing  just  because  they  are  still  slaves  to  the  old 
culture ;  they  lack  broad  insight.  The  actual  things 
they  try  to  do  are  good,  but  they're  barren  because 
their  background  is  wrong." 

" Thanks,"  Mabel  said  sarcastically.  "I'm  so  glad 
to  know  what's  wrong  with  us." 

"Now,  Yetta,"  Longman  said,  with  the  gesture  of  a 
circus  man  introducing  his  curiosities,  "the  show  is 
about  to  commence.  On  your  right  you  see  the 
'pure/  the  hidebound,  the  uncompromising  Socialist, 
Isadore  Braun.  To  your  left  you  see  the  ' suspect,' 
the  'bourgeoise,'  step-by-step  reformer,  Miss  Mabel 
Train.  They  are  about  to  engage  in  a  bloody  combat." 

"But,"  interposed  Yetta,  "what  are  you?" 

"Yes,"  Braun  echoed.     "What  are  you?" 

"That's  an  uninteresting  detail.  I'm  only  the  referee 
of  this  bout." 

"He  can  poke  fun  at  a  serious  position,"  Braun  said. 
"But  he's  afraid  to  or  can't  define  his  own." 

"I'll  tell  you  what  he  is,  Yetta,"  Mabel  volunteered. 
"He's  a—" 

"No,  I'll  tell  her  myself,"  Walter  interrupted.  "If 
you  want  it  in  one  word,  I'm  a  syndicalists.  We 
haven't  any  English  word  for  it." 

"He  believes  in  a  general  strike,"  Mabel  explained, 
"although  not  one  trade  strike  in  ten  really  succeeds." 

"Exactly  and  because,"  Walter  assented  emphati 
cally. 

"He  believes,"  Braun  supplemented,  "that  although 


WALTER'S  FAREWELL  231 

the  working  people  haven't  enough  class  consciousness 
to  vote  together  we  can  ask  them  to  fight  together." 

"  Exactly  and  once  more  exactly  !     I  hate  to  talk, 

Yetta,  because  —  as  I  confessed  to  you  before  these 

two    noble    examples    of    self-sacrifice    came    in  —  I 

;  haven't  the  nerve  to  practise  my  beliefs.     I  hate  to 

!  talk,  and  I've  never  done  anything  else.     But  I've  got 

I  just  as  definite  a  creed  as  Isadore. 

"A  general  strike  has  more  hope  of  success  than  a 
dozen  little  strikes,  because  it's  a  strike  for  liberty  — 
and  that's  the  only  thing  that  interests  all  the  working 
class.  The  trade  strikes  are  for  a  few  extra  pennies. 
And  when  one  of  them  does  succeed,  it's  because  of 
some  bigger  enthusiasm  than  was  written  in  their 
demands.  You  went  right  to  the  heart  of  the  matter 
last  night  when  you  said  you  had  been  striking  so  as 
not  to  be  slaves.  I'll  bet  you've  seen  it  when  you 
talked  to  the  other  unions.  Which  of  your  demands 
interested  them  most?  Dollars  to  doughnuts  it  was 
' recognition  of  the  union.'  They  all  have  demands  of 
their  own  about  wages  and  hours.  But  when  you  say 
'  union '  to  them,  you're  saying  liberty.  You're  appeal 
ing  to  something  bigger  than  considerations  of  pay  — 
to  their  very  love  of  life. 

"The  basis  of  a  General  Strike  must  be  an  ideal 
which  is  shared  by  every  working-man.  The  simon- 
pure  unionists,  the  A.  F.  of  L.,  the  Woman's  Trade 
Union  League,  are  fighting  for  little  shop  improve 
ments,  different  in  every  trade.  Sometimes  —  often  — 
one  set  of  demands  is  in  conflict  with  another.  The 
one  thing  that  holds,  the  movement  of  the  workers 
closer  together  is  this  brilliant  idea  of  union.  And  the 
leaders  are  busily  preaching  disunion. 


232  COMRADE  YETTA 

"Read  any  history  of  labor  and  you'll  see.  First  it 
was  every  man  for  himself.  Then  shop  unions  and 
each  shop  for  itself.  Then  all  the  workmen  of  one 
town.  Now,  its  national  trade-unions.  To-morrow  it 
will  be  industrial  unions.  The  change  has  already 
begun.  We  already  have  the  Allied  Building  Trades. 
Mabel's  keen  on  allying  the  various  branches  of  gar 
ment  workers.  The  miners  have  gone  further.  They 
have  a  real  industrial  union.  That's  the  next  step. 
We'll  have  the  typesetters,  pressmen,  folders,  news 
boys,  all  in  one  big  newspaper  union.  Engineers, 
switchmen,  firemen,  conductors,  roundhouse  and  re 
pair-shop  men  all  in  a  big  brotherhood  of  railroad  men. 
Twenty  gigantic  industrial  unions  in  place  of  the  hun 
dreds  of  impotent  little  trade  organizations.  No  one 
can  look  the  facts  in  the  face  and  deny  either  the  need 
of  the  change  or  the  actual  progress  towards  it. 

"Braun  shudders  at  the  thought  because  the  men 
who  are  now  urging  this  change  —  the  Industrial 
Workers  of  the  World  —  are  displeasing  to  him. 
They  are  not  good  party  socialists.  Mabel  don't  like 
them  because  they  tell  unpleasant  truths  about  the 
crooks  in  her  organization.  I  don't  like  them  per 
sonally,  either,  because  they  are  just  as  narrow-minded 
as  Isadore,  and  I  guess  some  of  them  are  as  crooked  as 
any  of  the  trade-union  leaders.  But  the  idea  is  bigger 
than  personalities.  You  mark  my  words,  Yetta,  indus 
trial  unionism  is  going  to  be  a  bigger  issue  every  year 
with  the  working-men.  It's  going  to  win.  And  the 
outcome  of  industrial  unionism  is  the  General  Strike 
and  Insurrection. 

"Isadore  pooh-poohs  the  idea  of  bloodshed.  The 
social  revolution  is  going  to  be  a  kid-glove  affair.  He 


WALTER'S   FAREWELL  233 

will  admit  the  possibility  of  sporadic  riots.  But  the 
great  victory  is  to  be  won  at  the  voting  booths.  Justice 
is  to  be  enthroned  by  ward  caucuses  and  party  con 
ventions.  Victor  Berger  instead  of  Dick  Croker.  The 
central  committee  instead  of  Tammany  Hall.  He 
really  believes  this,  but  it  is  based  on  two  suppositions, 
both  of  which  seem  to  me  very  uncertain.  First, 
reason  is  to  conquer  the  earth  and  the  great  majority 
is  to  vote  reasonably  —  that  is,  the  Socialist  ticket. 
Second,  the  grafters  and  all  the  contented,  well-fed, 
complaisant  people  are  going  to  resign  without  a 
struggle. 

"I  don't  think  they  will.  They  may  not  have  the 
courage  to  defend  their  privileges  themselves.  But 
bravery,  the  fighting  kind,  is  one  of  the  cheapest 
things  on  the  human  market.  Our  government  buys 
perfectly  good  soldiers  for  $13.50  a  month.  The 
privileged  class  always  has  hired  mercenaries  to  defend 
their  graft  and  I  think  they  will  in  the  future.  They've 
already  begun  to  do  it  with  their  State  Constabulary 
in  Pennsylvania.  Read  about  how  the  French  capital 
ists  massacred  our  comrades  after  the  Paris  Commune. 
That  was  only  thirty  years  ago.  I  don't  see  any  reason 
to  hope  for  a  very  startling  change  in  their  natures. 

"And  then  is  reason  going  to  rule  the  world  —  the 
cold  intellectual  convictions  that  Isadore  means?  I 
doubt  it.  The  great  movements  in  the  world's  history 
have  come  from  passionate  enthusiasms.  Take  the 
Reformation,  or  the  English  Commonwealth,  or  the 
French  Revolution.  Not  one  man  in  ten  of  all  the 
actors  in  those  crises  were  what  Isadore  would  call 
reasonable.  Reason  is  powerless  unless  it  is  backed 
by  a  great  enthusiasm.  And  if  we  have  that,  we  can 


234  COMRADE  YETTA 

turn  the  trick  quicker  with  a  general  strike  and  insur 
rection  than  we  could  by  voting. 

"This  question  of  violence  or  peace  is  a  thorny  one. 
We've  got  to  separate  what  we  would  like  to  see  from 
what  seems  probable.  Bloodshed  is  abhorrent.  But 
it  is  pretty  closely  associated  with  the  history  of  human 
progress.  Before  the  great  Revolution  the  mass  of  the 
French  people  were  in  the  very  blackest  ignorance. 
They've  had  a  century  of  revolution  and  bloodshed,  and 
to-day  they  are  the  most  cultured  nation  in  the  world. 
The  same  thing  is  happening  to-day  in  Russia.  We 
read  in  the  papers  of  assassinations  and  executions  and 
insurrections.  It  means  that  the  intellect  of  a  great 
people  is  coming  to  life.  And  the  mind  of  our  nation 
has  got  to  be  shaken  into  wakefulness,  too.  We've  got 
to  learn  new  and  deeper  meanings  to  the  old  words 
justice  and  liberty.  I'd  like  to  believe  we  could  learn 
them  in  school,  by  reading  socialist  pamphlets.  But 
all  the  race  has  ever  learned  about  them  so  far  has 
been  in  battle-fields  and  behind  barricades.  I  hate 
and  fear  bloodshed.  I  believe  it's  wrong.  Just  as 
you  said  you  thought  it  was  wrong  to  lie.  But  I  love 
liberty  more. 

"And  there's  one  other  point:  Until  we  learn  these 
lessons,  we've  got  to  see  our  strong  men  and  women 
cut  down  by  tuberculosis,  we've  got  to  stand  by  and 
watch  a  slaughter  of  innocent  babies  that  makes 
Herod's  little  massacre  look  like  a  schoolboy's  naughti 
ness.  The  socialists  don't  like  the  word  'violence.' 
The  reality  is  in  the  air  we  breathe.  The  landlord 
wracks  rent  out  of  the  poor  by  violence  —  no  amount  of 
legal  drivel  can  hide  the  fact  that  every  injustice  of 
our  present  society  is  put  through  by  the  aid  —  on 


H"VV4^/V4*U*. 

WALTER'S  FAREWELL  235 

the  treat  —  of  police.     The  whole  force  of  the  state 
is  back  of  the  grafters.     It's  violence  that  drives  people 
into  the  sweat-shops,  that  drives  the  boys  to  crime  and 
the  girls  to  prostitution.     And  all  this  deadly  injustice 
will  go  on  until  we've  learned  the  lessons  of  justice  and 
liberty.     Let  us  learn  them  as  peacefully  and  legally 
as  possible,  but  we  must  learn  them.     Blood  isn't  a  I 
nice  thing  to  look  at,  but  it  isn't  as  unspeakably  hor-j 
rible  as  the  sputum  of  tuberculosis." 

"What  you  are  saying  is  rank  anarchy,"  Braun  pro 
tested. 

"I've  told  you  a  hundred  times  you  can't  scare  me 
by  calling  names.  ' Anarchy'  is  just  as  much  a  word 
of  progress  as  '  Socialism.'  I  think  you've  got  the  best 
of  it  when  it  comes  to  a  description  and  analysis  of 
society  and  industrial  development.  But  the  Anarchists 
have  got  you  backed  off  the  map  in  the  understanding 
of  human  motives  and  social  impulses. 

"I'm  an  optimist,  Yetta,  about  this  social  conflict. 
I  don't  think  it  matters  much  what  form  people  give 
to  their  activity.  The  important  thing  is  not  to  be 
neutral.  The  thing  that  is  needed  is  a  passion  for 
righteousness.  Once  a  person  sees  —  really  sees  —  the 
conflict  between  greed  and  justice,  and  enlists  in  the 
revolution,  it  doesn't  matter  much  whether  he  goes 
into  the  infantry  or  cavalry  or  artillery.  I  see  in 
society  a  ruling  class  growing  fat  off  injustice,  a  great, 
lethargic  mass,  indifferent  through  ignorance,  and  a 
constantly  growing  army  of  revolt.  Anybody  who 
doubts  the  outcome  is  a  fool.  History  does  not  record 
a  single  year  which  did  not  bring  some  victory  for 
Justice.  But  a  person's  equally  a  fool  —  I  mean  you, 
Isadore  —  who  tries  to  prophesy  just  how  the  war  will 


236  COMRADE  YETTA 

be  conducted.  There  isn't  any  omniscient  general 
back  of  us,  directing  the  campaign.  The  progress 
towards  victory  is  the  result  of  myriad  efforts,  unco 
ordinated,  often  conflicting.  It  is  entirely  irrational  — 
just  like  evolution.  The  anthropoidal  ape,  sitting 
under  a  prehistoric  palm  tree  and  picking  fleas  off  his 
better  half,  did  not  know  how  —  through  the  ages  — 
his  offspring  were  going  to  become  men.  Even  with 
our  superior  intellects,  our  ability  to  study  the  records 
of  the  past  and  guess  into  the  future,  we  cannot  presage 
the  steps  of  the  progress.  The  directing  force  is  the 
instinctive  common  sense  of  life.  It's  a  more  mys 
terious  force  than  any  theological  God.  It's  always 
on  the  job,  always  pushing  life  through  new  experi 
ments,  through  'variations'  to  the  better  form. 

"All  evolution  has  been  a  history  of  life  struggling 
for  liberty.  It  was  a  momentous  revolution,  when  the 
first  tiny  animalcule  tore  itself  loose  from  immobility, 
when  it  conquered  the  ability  to  move  about  in  quest 
of  food  and  a  larger  life.  And  so  one  after  another 
life  conquered  new  abilities.  It's  abilities,  not  rights, 
that  constitute  liberty.  Think  how  many  fake  experi 
ments  life  made  before  it  turned  out  a  man.  The  same 
process  is  going  on  to-day.  You  can't  crowd  life  into 
a  definition.  Justice  is  being  approximated,  not  be 
cause  of  one  formula.  The  victory  will  come  not 
because  the  people  accept  one  theory,  but  because  of 
thousands  and  thousands  of  experiments.  And  the 
ones  that  fail  are  just  as  much  a  part  of  the  process. 

"  Gradually  this  common  sense  of  life  is  awaking 
the  minds  of  the  lethargic  mass.  This  is  sure  progress. 
It  matters  not  at  all  whether  the  mind  of  the  individual 
come  to  life  in  the  trade-union,  the  Socialist  party,  or 


WALTER'S  FAREWELL  237 

the  Anarchist  Group  —  or  the  Salvation  Army.  The 
important  thing  is  that  a  new  person  has  conquered  the 
ability  to  think  for  himself.  It  doesn't  even  matter 
whether  the  words  that  woke  him  to  life  were  true  or 
not. 

"Life  isn't  logical.  And  socialism  seems  to  me  to 
have  almost  smothered  its  soul-stirring  ideal  in  a  wordy 
effort  to  seem  logical.  The  trade-unions  are  illogical 
enough.  At  least  you  can  say  that  for  them.  But 
it's  only  once  in  a  while  —  by  accident  —  that  they 
sound  the  tocsin." 

This  kind  of  talk  disturbed  Isadore.  From  first  to 
last  it  ran  contrary  to  his  manner  of  thinking.  But 
in  an  illusive  way  it  seemed  to  have  a  semblance  of 
truth  —  a  certain  persuasiveness.  The  error  —  if  error 
there  was  —  was  subtle  and  hard  to  nail  down.  As  he 
listened  he  knew  he  was  expected  to  answer  it.  He 
must  defend  his  colors  before  Yetta.  It  was  not  an 
easy  thing  to  do.  His  whole  life  was  built  on  an  abid 
ing  faith  that  the  hope  of  his  people  lay  in  the  activities 
of  the  Socialist  party.  There  was  no  cant  nor  insin 
cerity  about  him.  He  felt  that  the  spread  of  such 
ideas  as  Longman's  would  render  doubly  difficult  the 
work  of  his  party.  It  vexed  him  not  to  be  able  at 
once  to  demolish  his  friend's  heresies.  But  he  was 
used  to  arguing  with  opponents  who  thought  any 
change  was  unnecessary  or  impossible.  Walter  ad 
mitted  all  this  and  went  further.  Isadore  was  off  his 
accustomed  field. 

" You're  a  hard  person  to  argue  with,"  he  said, 
"  because  your  ideas  are  so  unusual.  I  don't  mean  to 
say  you're  wrong  just  because  you  are  in  a  minority 
of  one.  But  it's  hard  to  reason  against  oratory.  I 


238  COMRADE  YETTA 

wish  you  would  put  your  position  down  on  paper,  so 
I  could  give  it  serious  thought." 

"Maeterlinck  has  come  pretty  close  to  it  in  Notre 
devoir  social,"  Walter  replied. 

"Oh,  that!"  Isadore  said  contemptuously.  "'That 
isn't  an  argument,  it's  a  sort  of  fairy  story." 

"Still  calling  names!  There's  truth  in  some  fairy 
tales  —  a  whole  lot  of  truth  you  can't  express  hi  your 
dialectics." 

"That !"  Isadore  said,  jumping  at  a  point  of  attack, 
"is,  I  guess,  the  fundamental  difference  between  us. 
You're  a  sort  of  mediae valist,  living  in  a  realm  of  ro 
mance  and  fairy  stories  —  ruled  over  by  your  instinc 
tive  sense  of  life.  You  forget  that  we  live  in  the  age 
of  reason.  You  said  liberty  consisted  hi  abilities. 
Well,  I  believe  that  abilities  bring  obligations.  Instead 
of  jeering  at  reason  and  dialectics,  I  think  it's  our  pre 
eminent  ability.  We,  reasoning  animals,  have  a  duty 
to  use  and  perfect  —  and  trust  —  our  intellects.  And 
the  Socialist  theory  is  the  biggest  triumph  of  the  human 
mind.  The  theory  of  evolution  is  the  only  thing  to 
compare  with  it.  But  Darwin  had  only  to  fight  a 
superstition.  It  wasn't  much  of  a  feat  to  convince 
thinking  people  that  it  took  more  than  one  hundred  and 
forty-four  hours  to  create  the  world  —  then  his  case 
was  practically  won.  Marx  had  to  fight  not  only  such 
theological  nonsense,  but  the  entire  opposition  of  the 
ruling  class.  Socialism  had  always  been  proscribed.  A 
college  professor  who  taught  it  frankly  would  lose  his 
job.  But  it  has  never  had  a  set-back.  It  has  gathered 
about  it  as  brilliant  a  group  of  intellects  as  has  Dar 
winism.  It's  growing  steadily. 

"Having  no  trust  in  reason,  you  are  driven  back  to 


WALTER'S   FAREWELL 

violence.  But  I  do  believe  in  intelligence.  I  don't 
want  to  hang  my  hope  of  the  future  on  such  illogical 
things  as  dynamite  and  flying  bullets. 

"  If  you  don't  respect  intellect  and  logic,  of  course 
you  don't  sympathize  with  Socialism.  But  you  can't 
ask  me  to  give  up  the  results  of  my  own  reasoning, 
backed  as  they  are  by  the  best  brains  of  our  times,  to 
accept  your  imaginings." 

"I  don't  ask  you  to  give  up  Socialism,"  Walter 
laughed.  "On  the  contrary,  as  long  as  it  seems  truth 
to  you,  give  up  all  the  rest.  Your  ability  seems  to 
find  its  right  setting  in  the  party  —  just  as  Mabel's 
does  in  the  trade-unions  —  just  as  I'd  be  ill  at  ease  and 
useless  hi  either. 

"The  point  I  want  to  insist  on  is  my  faith  that,  back 
of  your  reasoning  and  activity  and  back  of  my  specu 
lations  and  laziness,  this  instinctive  sense  of  life  is  work 
ing  out  its  own  purpose.  Only  future  generations  will 
be  able  to  know  which  —  if  either  of  us  —  is  right." 

This  argument  thrilled  and  fascinated  Yetta.  In 
the  years  that  were  to  follow  she  was  to  hear  such 
debates  repeated  endlessly.  The  new  circle  of  friends 
she  was  to  make  were  as  passionately  interested  in 
such  questions  of  social  philosophy  and  ethics  as  are 
the  art  students  of  Paris  in  the  relative  value  of  line 
and  color  or  the  concept  of  pure  beauty.  In  tune 
talking  would  lose  its  charm ;  she  was  to  realize  that  — 
as  Walter  had  said  —  it  often  leads  to  brain-fag.  But 
this,  her  first  experience,  was  an  immense  event. 

The  two  men  leaned  back  in  their  chairs,  their  faces 
relaxed.  They  seemed  to  have  talked  themselves  out. 
Yetta  turned  to  Mabel,  who  sat  beside  her  on  the  win 
dow-seat. 


240  COMRADE  YETTA 

" You're  not  a  Socialist?"   she  asked. 

"No."  Mabel  replied.  Such  discussions  bored  her. 
"Nor  an  Anarchist  either.  I  happen  to  be  living  in 
the  year  of  grace  1903.  I'm  not  interested  in  Isadore's 
logical  deductions  nor  Walter's  imaginings.  They 
both  know  that  if  the  working  people  want  enough 
butter  for  their  bread,  —  let  alone  Utopia,  —  they've 
got  to  organize.  Cold  experience  shows  that  they  can 
be  organized  on  economic  step-by-step  demands,  and 
that  we  can  build  up  stable,  practical  unions  along 
these  lines  —  which  every  day  are  bringing  to  the 
working  class  a  great  spirit  of  unity.  And  cold  experi 
ence  also  shows  that  the  labor  organizations  which  ask 
for  the  earth  don't  last.  There  have  been  dozens  just 
like  the  Industrial  Workers  of  the  World  before,  and 
where  are  they  now?  Those  people  haven't  enough 
practical  sense  to  organize  a  picnic. 

"If  I  were  a  theorist,  instead  of  a  rather  busy  per 
son,  I  would  have  nothing  against  Industrial  Unionism. 
It's  on  the  cards,  and  I  am  working  for  it.  But  I 
haven't  any  time  for  these  fanatical  dreamers.  I 
haven't  anything  against  the  Socialist  idea  of  the  work 
ing  people  going  in  for  political  representation.  When 
ever  I  get  a  chance  I  put  in  a  word  for  it.  But  once 
more  I've  no  time  for  people  who  don't  do  any  real 
work  and  spend  their  time  writing  pamphlets  about 
nothing  at  all  and  quarrelling  over  party  intrigue. 
They're  very  wonderful,  no  doubt,  with  their  reason 
and  their  imaginations  —  master-builders,  the  archi 
tects  of  the  future,  and  all  that.  I'm  quite  content  to 
be  a  little  coral  insect,  adding  my  share  to  the  very 
necessary  foundations,  which  they  forget  about.  Any 
how,  to-night  isn't  i  Le  Grand  Soir '  —  and  as  dream- 


WALTER'S  FAREWELL  241 

ing  isn't  my  job,  I  can't  afford  to  sleep  late.     Come 


on." 


In  the  doorway,  as  the  four  were  going  out,  Mabel 
called  Isadore,  who  was  pairing  off  with  Yetta,  and 
asked  him  about  the  injunction  in  the  cigar-makers' 
case.  Walter  dropped  behind  with  Yetta.  He  was 
almost  glad  that  Mabel  had  denied  him  these  last  few 
minutes  of  tete-a-tete  with  her.  He  had  been  looking 
forward  to  it  all  the  evening.  But  there  was  not  any 
thing  for  him  to  say  to  her.  So  he  talked  to  Yetta,  as 
they  crossed  the  Square. 

"  There's  one  thing  I  almost  forgot.  Mrs.  Karner 
has  taken  a  great  fancy  to  you.  I  know  she'd  appre 
ciate  it  if  you  went  up  to  see  her  every  once  in  a  while. 
Don't  let  her  know  I  suggested  it,  but  something  she 
said  the  other  day  made  me  see  how  much  she  likes 
you.  She  tries  very  hard  to  pretend  not  to  care  about 
anything,  but  at  bottom  she's  serious  —  and  good. 
In  the  League  work  you'll  have  to  play  around  a  good 
deal  with  some  of  the  swells,  and  she's  a  good  one  to 
practice  on. 

"Well,  here  we  are.  I'll  send  the  keys  over  by  Mrs. 
Rocco  when  I  go.  You  can  move  in  any  time  you 
want  to." 

Mabel  went  up  the  steps  and  fitted  her  latch-key 
into  the  door.  She  reached  down  to  shake  hands  with 
Walter. 

"So  long,"  she  said  with  an  even  voice.  "Good 
luck." 

"About  once  in  every  long  while,"  he  said,  "we'll 
get  mail.  I'd  like  to  hear  from  you  now  and  then." 

"I'm  not  much  of  a  letter- writer,"  she  said,  "but  I 
won't  forget  you." 


242  COMRADE  YETTA 

For  the  first  time,  Yetta  really  believed  that  Mabel 
did  not  love  him. 

"Good-by,  Mr.  Longman/'  she  said.  " We'll  all  be 
waiting  for  you  to  get  back." 

" Thanks!  And  I  hope  you'll  write  too  —  give  me 
the  news  when  you  send  me  my  mail.  And  the  good 
chance  to  you.  Good-by,  Mabel." 

"  Good-by,  Walter,"  she  called  back  over  her  shoulder. 

"Isadore,"  Walter  said,  as  the  door  shut  behind  the 
girls,  "come  on  over  to  the  Lafayette  and  have  a  drink." 

Braun  looked  at  his  watch. 

"Oh,  damn  the  time.  Come  on.  I  want  somebody 
to  talk  to  me." 


BOOK  IV 

CHAPTER  XIX 

YETTA'S  WOKK 

IN  the  next  few  months  Yetta  learned  a  new  meaning 
for  the  word  "work."  In  the  sweat-shop,  day  after 
day,  she  had  sat  before  the  machine,  her  mind  a  blank, 
three-quarters  of  her  muscles  lifeless,  the  rest  speeding 
through  a  dizzying  routine.  Only  when  a  thread  broke 
had  there  been  any  thought  to  it.  In  the  new  work 
there  was  no  repetition,  none  of  this  dead  monotony. 
Every  act,  every  word  she  spoke,  was  the  result  of  a 
consciousness  vividly  alive.  In  the  keen,  exhilarating 
thrill  of  it  she  had  little  time  to  mope  over  Walter's 
absence. 

It  is  a  strange  paradox  of  our  life  that,  while  no  other 
social  phenomenon  touches  us  at  so  many  intimate 
points  as  the  organization  of  labor,  while  very  few  are  of 
more  importance,  most  of  us  know  nothing  at  all  about 
the  details  of  this  great  industrial  struggle.  Our  clothes 
bear  the  " union  label"  or  are  "scab."  In  either  case 
they  are  an  issue  in  the  conflict.  Heads  have  been 
broken  over  the  question  of  whether  this  page,  from 
which  you  are  reading,  should  be  printed  in  a  "closed" 
or  "open  shop."  Around  our  cigarettes,  the  boxes 

243 


COMRADE  YETTA 

in  which  they  are  packed,  the  matches  with  which  we 
tight  them,  the  easy-chairs  in  which  we  smoke  them, 
and  the  carpets  on  which  we  caretesry  spin  Aft  aahaaj 
a  tragk  battle  is  ranging*  Kine  out  of  every  tern  poopiM 
we  meet  are  eaftftamed  in  it.  Tbe  man  who  takes  our 
nickel  in  the  Subway,  the  waiter  who  serves  our  lunch, 
Aft  guests  at  dinner,  the  unseen  person  who  pulk  up 
the  cunam  at  the  theatre,  the  taskab  chauffeur  who 
4afaBuslfcnmn,aifi  al%Miatfai  oragMaat  ^uninmm.H 
From  the  human  point  of  view  there  is  no  vaster,, 
more  passionate  drama*  Intense  convictions*  bitter, 
prejudices*  the  dogged  heroism  of 


r.7*-:  ;i:v. :  v. c  "  .v;  ::.:"/":> 
Thestagie — whkh  is  our  Fathedand 
by  hired  thu^  firom  the  "detective 
and  by  dynamiters.    In  Aft  troupe  are  such  people  as 

?--::::-. 


rf  pBMBk    There  are  hardly  any  of  us  who 


Aft  viewpoint  of  politics^  Aft  ccaffict  ha?  a 


T:  "?.:  ;IT'."<V"-V^  .:v.7V>"   ::  "r.  ;s>:  — ;-   ,\;  -:\^  •:«  .-7%.  ;:  -;v 

•  -  -     -  -.  *      -  ">  •         -fc-fc-M>  -^-*  ~±        •^•"^  Crfcl^fc         ij*.        ^A^.-fc  ,-^^B-_.^        -^  ^    •  B        ^fc  m*  r  i  ¥ti_P         mi  -^ 

•  • — '-  >  .  ^     ^    ; , . .-.....'.,  '       .  .  - 

ganinng?    Close  to  two  inflfion  of  our  cttuejBSpfl^r  dues 

^•^  ,  •*      ^  -fc  .^.—-^    ^^  * 

1ft  tue  UMon^v  wnr  numoer  grows  oy  a  quarter  ot  a 


What  is  to  be  done  about  u?    Hb  ow  who  thinks  of 
ftidk  things  can  deny  that  sooner  or  later  we — as  a 

:  TV*  /  V."  .".  ,v   "">   V':_*..A- 

color.  Aft  or^aaoation  of  labor  toanMS  us  on  every 


YETTA  S  WORK 

hand.  But  very  few  of  us  have  any  idea  of  the  life  of 
those  men  and  women  who  devote  themselves  to  this 
imposing,  threatening  movement.  What,  for  instance, 
is  the  daily  work  of  the  secretary  of  the  Gasfit  tors' 
a  in  our  town?  What  is  an  "agitator"?  What 
are  his  duties  ?  How  does  he  spend  his  time  ?  Why  ? 

It  was  into  this  little-known  life  that  Yetta  was 
First  of  all  she  was  "Business  Agent'*  —  or 

we  more  generally  say  %<the  Walking  Delegate  *' 
of  her  Vest-Makers'  Union.    She  had  to  attend  to  all 
business  between  the  organixation  and  the  bosses. 

When  a  complaint  reached  her  that  some  employ  or 
was  viohtinc  rho  tt&feac!  ho  had  signed  with  the  union, 
she  had  to  investigate.  If  the  charge  was  justified,  she 
could  call  the  girls  out  until  the  offending  boss  decided 
to  observe  his  agreement, 

It  is  just  as  hard  for  a  labor  organization  to  find  a 
satisfactory  "business  agent,"  as  it  is  for  a  mercantile 
concern.  One  will  be  too  aggressive,  another  too  yield 
ing.  One  will  be  always  irritating  the  employers  and 
causing  unnecessary  friction.  The  next  will  make 
friends  with  the  bosses  and  be  twisted  about  their 
fingers.  Once  in  a  while  a  "In  inrjii  iglliit  "  sells  out, 
betrays  his  constituents  for  a  bribe,  just  as  some  of  our 
political  representatives  have  done. 

Even  in  trades  where  the  union  has  existed  for  a 

ig  time  and  somewhat  stable  relations  have  grown 
up  between  it  and  the  employers,  the  position  of  '*  busi 
ness  agent "  calls  for  a  degree  of  tact  and  force  which  is 
rare.  It  is  impossible  for  the  delegate  of  the  men  to 
reach  a  cordial  understanding  with  the  bosses.  He  has 
at  heart  the  interest  of  the  entire  trade,  men  working 
in  different  places  under  varied  conditions,  while  the 


tti  COMRADE  YETTA 

boas  thinks  only  of  his  own  shop.  One  is  trying  to  en 
force  general  rules,  the  other  is  seeking  exception*. 
The  employer  may  be  friendly  with  the  union  and  in 
some  sudden  rush  t&k  a  favor  which  the  men  themselves 
would  like  to  grant.  But  the  walking  delegate,  know- 
ing  that  all  hoaiff  are  not  so  well  disposed,  that  be 
may  not  grant  to  one  what  be  refuses  to  others,  can- 
not  make  exception,  even  if  it  seems  jBMgomMe  to  him. 

Yetta's  position  was  doubly  difficult.  The  boss 
vest-makers  were  smarting  under  their  defeat*  They 
regarded  the  union  as  an  unpleasant  innovation,  an 
infringement  of  their  liberty,  A  visit  from  Yetta 
gccmcd  an  impertinence.  On  the  other  hand  the  new 
union  was  pitifully  weak.  The  teeatury  was  empty. 
The  bosses  knew  this,  knew  just  bow  much  hunger  the 
strike  had  meant  to  their  employees.  They  tried  to 
take  advantage  of  the  situation.  The  Association  of 
Vert  Manufacturers,  after  the  disorganization  which 
followed  the  strike,  was  getting  together  again.  Their 
frequent  meeting  promised  a  new  attack.  All  the 
girls  felt  trouble  in  the  air.  There  woe  causes  for 
quarrel  in  almost  every  shop.  But  a  new  strike  —  if  it 
failed — would  surely  wreck  the  union.  Everything 
was  to  gain  by  delaying  the  new  outbreak,  YeflfaUj 
common  sense,  supplemented  by  Mabel's  experienced 
advice,  pulled  them  through  many  tight  places* 

The  crisis  carne  in  about  a  month  at  the  very  Crown 
Vert  Company,  before  which  Yetta  had  tried  to  kill 
Pick-Axe,  The  boas,  rdfirtrin,  was  just  the  kind  of 
man  to  have  employed  such  a  thug.  He  began  the 
attack  by  discharging  three  girls  who  had  been  promi 
nent  in  the  strike,  A  clause  in  the  settlement,  which 
be  had  signed,  had  said  there  should  be  no  dL«criminar 


YETTA'8  WORK  247 

tion  against  the  unionists.    If  Edelstein  was  allowed  to 
violate  this  agreement,  the  other  bosses  would  surely 
follow  suit,  and  one  by  one  the  little  advantage*  so* 
dearly  won  would  be  tort, 

Yetta  tried  to  reason  with  the  man.  He  tilted  his 
cigar  at  a  pugnacious  angle,  put  his  feet  on  the  desk, 
and  insolently  hummed  a  tune  while  she  talked, 

"If  you  think  you  can  run  my  shop,"  he  said,  "you 
can  guess  again.  The  union  wants  to  know  why  I 
fired  these  girl*?  Wen,  tefl  the  unkm  I  didn't  like  the 
way  they  wore  their  hair," 

"It's  nine  o'clock  now,"  Yetta  said,    "If  you  don't 
those  girls  by  three  —  that'*  six  hour*- 


or  give  the  union  a  serious  reason  for  their  discharge, 
IH  cafl  a  strike  on  your  shop," 

"Go  ahead  and  cafl  it/'  he  Mid  savagely,  "My 
girls  have  had  enough  of  your  dirty  union,  Tbqr 
won't  try  striking  again." 

Although  Yetta  had  managed  to  deliver  her  ultimo 
turn  with  outward  calm  and  a  sbow  of  confidence,  the 
next  six  hours  were  the  most  unpleanant  *he  had  ever 
spent.  Would  the  girls  walk  out  at  her  can?  If  they 
did  not,  it  would  surely  kill  the  union,  Eddstein  was 
certainly  offering  them  all  sorts  of  inducements  to  stay, 
The  other  bosses  were  back  of  him,  urging  him  on, 
They  wanted  to  break  the  union.  What  had  she  to 
offer  the  girte  but  hunger  and  an  ideal  ?  There  were 
not  ten  dollars  in  the  treasury.  Most  of  the  girl*  were 
still  in  debt  from  the  first  strike  ;  many  of  than  would 
be  dispossessed  by  their  landlords  if  they  struck  again, 

But  Yetta's  «de  was  stronger  than  she  realised, 
The  suceeis  of  the  strike  had  taugFit  the  girl*  the  tangi 
ble  value  of  loyalty,  The  break-up  of  the  employ 


248  COMRADE  YETTA 

association  had  had  the  opposite  effect.  Each  and 
every  boss  had  tried  to  desert  his  fellows  first  and  so 
make  better  terms  with  the  union.  Edelstein  did  not 
trust  —  would  have  been  a  fool  to  trust  —  the  other 
employers.  They  were  using  him  as  a  catspaw,  and 
he  knew  it.  If  he  succeeded  in  breaking  the  union, 
they  would  gladly  profit  by  it.  But,  after  all,  they  were 
his  competitors ;  if  he  got  into  trouble  single-handed, 
they  would  just  as  gladly  profit  by  that.  He  consulted 
his  forewomen.  They  all  believed  that  enough  of  the 
force  would  go  out  to  tie  up  his  shop.  So  the  three 
girls  were  reemployed. 

This  victory  gave  Yetta  new  strength  and  confidence. 
She  had  taken  the  measure  of  her  opponents  and  was  not 
afraid  any  more.  She  went  about  her  work  with  a 
firmer  tread,  with  a  greater  faith  in  the  eventual  tri 
umph  of  her  cause.  Her  decisive  stand  with  Edelstein 
had  turned  the  balance.  The  bosses  began  to  accept 
the  union  as  an  inevitable  thing.  Yetta  did  not  have 
to  call  a  strike  for  many  months,  not  until  the  girls 
had  recovered  their  breath  and  gathered  enough 
strength  to  demand  and  win  a  new  increase  in 
wages. 

Her  work  as  business  agent  absorbed  only  a  small 
amount  of  her  time.  Most  of  it  went  into  efforts  to 
organize  the  other  garment  workers.  The  success  of 
the  vest-makers  had  made  a  great  impression  on  the 
sweated  trades.  The  idea  of  "union"  was  popular. 
Sooner  or  later  they  were  bound  to  organize  —  as  the 
inevitable  logic  of  events  forces  labor  to  unite  every 
where.  It  was  not  smooth  sailing  by  any  means.  But 
Yetta  gradually  grew  to  the  stature  of  her  work.  Al 
though  she  was  sometimes  discouraged  at  the  slowness 


YETTA'S  WORK  249 

of  her  progress,  Mabel  was  always  radiant  and  talked 
much  of  her  remarkable  success. 

But  in  her  effort  to  ally  the  various  garment  trades, 
Yetta  was  face  to  face  with  the  thorniest  problem  of 
labor  organization.  In  union  there  is  strength,  and  if 
we  do  not  hang  together,  we  will  surely  hang  separately. 
But  if  you  re-read  the  history  of  our  country  during 
the  years  between  the  Revolution  and  the  ratification 
of  the  Constitution,  and  recall  the  various  efforts  at 
secession  which  culminated  in  the  Civil  War,  you  will 
be  impressed  by  the  difficulty  of  living  up  to  this  beauti 
fully  simple  idea  of  united  action  in  politics.  It  is  not 
different  in  labor  organization. 

In  almost  every  industry  there  are  small  trades  of 
highly  skilled  men  who  occupy  a  favorable  strategic 
position.  It  is  so  with  "the  cutters"  in  the  business  of 
making  clothes.  Their  union  was  the  oldest  of  all. 
Practically  every  man  in  the  country  who  knew  the 
trade  was  a  member.  They  could  not  be  replaced  by  un 
skilled  " scabs."  They  were  in  a  position  to  insist  that 
the  bosses  address  them  as  "  Mister."  Why  should 
they  join  forces  with  these  new  and  penniless  unions  ? 
What  had  they  to  gain  by  putting  their  treasury  at  the 
disposal  of  the  struggling  " buttonhole  workers"? 

Why  should  the  opulent  province  of  New  York 
enter  into  a  union  with  tiny  Delaware  or  far-away 
Georgia  ?  In  the  proposed  Congress  how  could  rep 
resentation  be  justly  distributed  ?  The  cutters  would 
not  listen  to  any  proposal  which  did  not  give  them  an 
overwhelming  voice  in  the  Council.  It  is  against  such 
cold  facts  as  these  ^that  the  theory  of  Industrial  Union 
ism,  which  had  sounded  so  alluring  to  Yetta  as  Longman 
outlined  it,  has  to  make  headway. 


250  COMRADE  YETTA 

At  first  Yetta  was  confused  by  the  conflicting  organ 
izations  which  were  struggling  for  support  from  the 
workers.  There  was  the  American  Federation  of 
Labor,  to  which  Mabel  gave  her  allegiance.  Its 
organizers  were  practical  men,  interested  first,  last, 
and  all  the  time  in  shop  conditions.  Effective  in  their 
way,  but  their  cry,  "A  little  less  injustice,  please," 
seemed  timid  to  Yetta.  Then  there  was  the  Socialist 
party.  Their  theories  were  more  impressive  to  her  — 
they  went  further  in  their  demands  and  seemed  to  have 
a  broader  vision.  But  of  all  the  Socialists  she  knew, 
Braun  was  the  only  one  who  interested  himself  actively 
in  the  organization  of  the  workers.  The  rest  seemed 
wholly  occupied  with  political  action.  There  was 
also  the  Industrial  Workers  of  the  World.  They  cared 
very  little  for  either  firmly  organized  unions,  which 
were  Mabel's  hobby,  or  for  the  party  in  which  Isadore 
put  such  faith.  They  placed  all  their  emphasis  on  the 
Spirit  of  Revolt.  In  a  more  specific  way  than  the  other 
factions  they  were  out  for  the  Revolution.  They  ap 
pealed  strongly  to  that  side  of  Yetta  which  was  vividly 
touched  by  the  manifold  misery  she  saw  about  her, 
the  side  of  her  personality  which  had  struck  out  blindly 
at  Pick-Axe.  She  recognized  that  it  had  been  a  blind 
and  dangerous  impulse.  It  was  not  likely  to  come 
again.  But  this  phase  of  her  character,  although  she 
feared  it,  she  could  not  despise.  It  was  not  dead,  it 
was  only  asleep.  And  she  knew  that  the  same  thing 
was  present  in  the  hearts  of  all  the  down-trodden  people 
—  her  comrades  in  the  fight  for  life  and  liberty. 

The  triangular  debate,  which  she  had  heard  for  the 
first  time  at  Walter's  farewell  dinner,  she  heard  repeated 
on  all  sides.  She  felt  it  no  longer  as  an  interesting 


YETTA'S   WORK  251 

academic  discussion,  but  as  the  vital  problem  of  the 
working-class.  It  was  an  issue  towards  which  she 
would  have  to  take  a  definite  attitude. 

The  welter  of  ideas,  the  perplexing  conflict  between 
alluring  theories  and  hard  facts,  was  sharply  illustrated 
to  her  by  a  mass  meeting  at  Cooper  Union  which  had 
been  called  to  raise  funds  for  the  Western  Federation 
of  Miners.  All  classes  of  society  were  shocked  at  the 
news  of  violence  and  bloodshed  in  that  spectacular 
outbreak  of  social  war  in  Colorado.  One  thing  was 
clear  to  all  —  there  was  no  use  preaching  peace,  no  use 
talking  about  the  harmony  of  interest  between  labor  and 
capital,  there  was  nothing  the  Civic  Federation  could 
do.  The  curtain  had  been  torn  aside.  It  was  war. 

Few  of  the  workers  in  the  city  approved  of  the  vio 
lent  methods  to  which  the  miners  had  resorted.  But  in 
the  heat  of  battle  such  considerations  became  insignifi 
cant.  The  working-class  of  New  York  wanted  to  help. 

Two  or  three  orderly  speeches  had  been  made,  when 
confusion  was  caused  by  the  miners'  delegate.  Instead 
of  telling  the  story  of  the  strike,  as  had  been  expected 
of  him,  he  utilized  his  time  in  denunciation  of  the 
American  Federation  of  Labor  and  in  chanting  the 
praises  of  Industrial  Unionism.  The  audience  had 
gathered  to  express  their  sympathy  for  the  miners. 
He  insulted  the  organization  to  which  most  of  these 
Easterners  belonged. 

Yetta  had  never  heard  a  more  forceful  piece  of  ora 
tory.  He  had  led  a  charge  against  the  State  militia,  and 
he  was  not  afraid  of  a  hostile  audience.  His  appear 
ance  of  immense  strength  dominated  the  more  puny 
city  dwellers.  His  mighty  voice  rang  out  above  the 
tumult  and  reduced  it. 


252  COMRADE  YETTA 

"The  A.  F.  of  L.,"  he  shouted,  "is  a  rotten  aristoc 
racy.  Everywhere  it  is  holding  down  the  less  fortunate 
workers.  More  strikes  are  double-crossed  by  '  labor 
leaders'  than  are  lost  in  a  fair  fight.  Until  we  smash 
it  there's  no  hope  for  the  working-class.  Out  in  the 
mines  we've  already  won  a  three-fifty  day.  Not  for 
the  skilled  trades,  but  for  every  man  who  goes  down. 
We  don't  have  any  leaders  who  go  to  the  Civic  Federa 
tion  and  drink  champagne  with  the  capitalists. 

"Look  at  the  unions  you're  proud  of.  You  know 
as  well  as  I  do  that  the  Big  Six  scabbed  on  the  press 
men.  Nobody  in  the  printing  industry  has  got  a  chance. 
The  typographers  have  pigged  it  all. 

"Nobody's  got  a  look-in  with  the  labor  fakirs  unless 
they've  got  enough  money  to  pay  initiation  fees. 

"You  craft  unionists  have  won  your  house  and  lot 
and  '  benefits.'  But  I  tell  you  that  the  Revolution  is 
coming  from  the  unskilled  who  can't  pay  your  fees. 
If  you  don't  get  out  of  the  way,  you'll  get  run  over  with 
the  rest  of  the  aristocrats  and  grafters. 

"Your  graft  is  no  good,  anyhow.  It  won't  last.  It 
depends  on  your  skill,  and  machines  are  killing  skill 
every  day.  Look  at  the  glass-blowers.  That  was  a  fine 
craft  —  wasn't  it  ?  You  couldn't  blow  glass  unless  you 
had  served  a  long  apprenticeship.  And  when  you  once 
knew  the  trade,  it  was  a  cinch  —  a  graft  for  the  rest  of 
your  life.  Sweet,  wasn't  it?  Just  the  thing  'Old 
Sell-'em-out'  Sam  Gompers  dreams  about.  All  of  a 
sudden  somebody  invented  a  machine.  Now  the  glass- 
blowers  are  yelling  about  the  Child  Labor  Law  —  a 
kid  of  twelve  can  do  more  work  with  a  machine  than  a 
dozen  men  by  hand. 

"You  craft  unionists  ought  to  go  out  and  look  at  a 


YETTA'S  WORK  253 

machine  —  an  automatic  that's  knocked  Hell  out  of 
some  other  trade.  You'd  see  what's  coming  to  you 
and  your  A.  F.  of  L. 

"My  father  was  a  'grainer,'  painted  the  graining  on 
wainscoting  and  bureaus  —  fine  trade  it  was,  too.  He 
had  a  nice  little  house  with  a  garden  to  it ;  the  old 
woman  had  a  servant.  Some  aristocrats  we  were. 
He  was  going  to  send  me  to  college  —  he  was.  Then 
they  invented  a  machine.  He  hit  the  trail  to  Colorado, 
and  I  went  down  in  the  mine  when  I  was  thirteen. 

"  Just  think  about  that  machine  a  minute.  It  could 
do  the  work  better  than  men,  so  it  put  the  'grainers ' 
out  of  business.  It  ain't  got  no  feet,  so  it  don't  use 
shoes.  Kind  of  hard  on  the  cobblers.  It  ain't  got 
no  head,  so  it  don't  wear  out  three  hats  a  year  like  my 
old  man  did.  Kind  of  hard  on  the  hat  makers.  The 
machine  ain't  got  no  belly,  it  don't  eat  nothing.  That's 
a  jolt  for  the  butcher  and  baker  —  and  the  farmer  too. 
The  machine  don't  get  sick.  No  use  for  a  doctor. 
The  machine"  —  he  paused  for  his  climax  —  "the 
machine  has  no  soul  —  it  don't  even  need  a  minister. 

"The  machine  is  killing  the  craft  unions.  It's 
bringing  about  the  day  of  the  unskilled.  The  answer 
is  —  Industrial  Unionism." 

The  audience  was  too  angry  at  his  attack  to  applaud. 
The  collection,  when  it  was  taken  up,  was  not  half 
what  had  been  expected. 

"Perfectly  insane,"  was  Mabel's  comment  as  they 
walked  home. 

"But  what  he  said  sounded  true  to  me,"  Yetta  pro 
tested. 

"True?"  Mabel  demanded.  "What  was  the  true 
reason  he  came?  To  raise  money  for  the  striking 


254  COMRADE  YETTA 

miners  —  who  need  it.  He  didn't  even  come  here  at 
his  own  expense.  They  sent  him  —  to  raise  funds. 
He  spouts  a  lot  of  his  crazy  ideas  and  spoils  it  all.  I 
don't  believe  we  collected  enough  to  pay  his  railroad 
fare.  Is  that  your  idea  of  truth  ?" 

Yetta  could  not  find  an  answer. 

But  the  effort  to  solve  such  problems  as  this  was  a 
big  factor  in  her  mental  development.  It  gave  her 
added  incentive  to  study.  She  sought  learning  not 
because  " culture"  is  conventionally  considered  a  good 
thing,  but  because  she  had  a  vital  need  for  a  wider 
knowledge  in  her  daily  life. 

As  Walter  had  foretold,  she  found  constant  temptation 
to  neglect  her  study.  She  resisted  it  bravely.  But 
when  the  " knee-pant  operatives,"  whom  she  had  or 
ganized,  went  out,  she  could  not  find  heart  for  books. 
She  gave  all  her  time  to  the  strike.  It  was  only  a  three 
weeks'  interruption.  But  the  next  year  the  buttonhole 
workers  were  out  for  two  solid  months,  the  hottest  of 
the  year  —  and  lost.  It  was  Yetta's  first  defeat. 
The  last  weeks  had  been  a  nightmare.  Children  had 
died  of  hunger.  Some  older  women  had  hanged  them 
selves.  When  at  last  it  was  over,  Yetta  dragged  her 
self  up  to  the  Woman's  Trade  Union  League  and  wrote 
out  her  resignation. 

"What  on  earth  do  you  mean?"  Mabel  asked. 

"Oh  !  I'm  no  good.  I  can't  ever  go  down  on  the 
East  Side  again.  I  might  see  one  of  them.  It's  all 
my  fault.  I  called  them  out.  I  promised  them  so 
much." 

The  moment  Yetta  had  left  the  office  Mabel  tele 
phoned  to  Mrs.  Karner  at  her  country  home  at  Cos- 
Cob-on-the-Sound. 


YETTA'S  WORK  255 

Yetta  had  followed  Walter's  advice  in  regard  to  Mrs. 
Karner,  and  a  real  friendship  had  grown  up  between 
them.  Mabel  did  not  understand  why  this  blase 
society  woman,  with  her  carefully  groomed  flippancy, 
cared  for  the  very  serious-minded  young  Jewess,  but 
she  knew  that  they  frequently  lunched  together.  So 
she  told  Mrs.  Karner  over  the  telephone  how  Yetta  had 
broken  down. 

On  the  window-seat  of  her  room,  Yetta  cried  herself 
to  sleep,  —  the  troubled,  haunted  sleep  of  pure  exhaus 
tion.  She  was  waked  at  last  from  her  nightmare  by  a 
pounding  on  her  door.  It  was  Mrs.  Karner. 

"You  poor  youngster!  I  dropped  into  the  office  a 
moment  ago  to  sign  some  papers  for  Mabel  and  she 
told  me  about  your  resignation.  I'm  so  glad  !  Now 
you  haven't  any  excuse  not  to  visit  me.  I'm  lonely 
out  at  Cos-Cob.  The  motor's  at  the  door.  Put  on 
your  hat." 

Before  Yetta  knew  what  was  happening  to  her  she 
was  in  the  motor.  In  fifteen  minutes  they  were  out 
of  the  city,  and  Mrs.  Karner  put  her  arm  about  her. 

"It  was  such  a  very  little  they  asked  for,"  Yetta 
muttered.  "Not  so  much  as  we  vest-makers  de 
manded." 

Mrs.  Karner  did  not  see  fit  to  reply,  and  Yetta  fell 
back  into  a  sort  of  doze.  At  last  they  turned  through 
a  stone  gateway  into  the  Karners'  place.  She  got  only 
a  hurried  glance  at  the  well-watered  lawn  and  the  open 
stretch  of  the  Sound.  She  was  rushed  upstairs  and  to 
bed.  In  the  morning  Mrs.  Karner  would  not  let  her 
get  up.  It  was  the  first  time  Yetta  had  spent  a  day  in 
bed. 

When  she  was  allowed  to  get  up,  she  found  the  estate 


256  COMRADE  YETTA 

a  strange  country  to  be  explored.  The  greenhouses, 
the  tame  deer,  the  spotless  stables,  the  dairy,  the  ken 
nels,  the  boat-house,  all  were  endlessly  interesting  to 
her.  Interesting  enough  to  make  her  forget  for  a  while 
the  horrors  of  New  York.  It  was  the  third  day  that 
she  made  friends  with  the  gardener,  and  after  that  she 
got  up  with  the  sun  to  help  him  harvest  the  poppies. 

On  Friday  Mr.  Karner  appeared,  with  a  man  and  his 
wife,  whose  name  Yetta  never  troubled  herself  to  re 
member,  and  they  all  went  off  for  a  week-end  cruise. 
Most  of  the  time  the  older  people  played  bridge.  Yetta 
made  friends  with  the  sea  and  a  gray-haired  old  sailor 
from  the  Azores,  who  could  speak  nothing  but  Portu 
guese.  Once  while  at  anchor  he  helped  her  catch  a 
fish.  She  would  have  enjoyed  the  cruise  more  if  they 
had  let  her  eat  in  the  forecastle  with  the  crew.  She 
liked  Mrs.  Karner  very  much  when  they  were  alone  to 
gether,  but  it  was  unpleasant  to  see  her  with  these  others. 

In  time  the  color  returned  to  Yetta's  cheeks,  and  hear 
ing  that  Mabel  had  torn  up  her  resignation,  she  went 
back  to  Washington  Square  and  to  work. 

Except  for  such  crises,  Yetta  followed  rigorously 
the  course  of  reading  which  Walter  had  mapped  out 
for  her.  The  afternoons  and  evenings  belonged  to  the 
work  of  the  League,  to  the  very  busy  life  of  the  real 
world.  The  mornings  belonged  to  Walter.  Her 
first  thought  was  always  of  him.  While  the  coffee  was 
heating,  she  attended  to  his  mail.  After  breakfast, 
with  his  prospectus  spread  out  before  her,  she  settled 
herself  in  one  of  his  chairs  and  took  up  one  of  his 
books.  Following  his  suggestion  she  made  copious 
notes,  and,  when  a  book  was  finished,  she  wrote  a  thou 
sand  words  or  so  on  the  main  ideas  she  had  gained  from 


YETTA'S  WORK  257 

it.  She  carefully  saved  all  these  notes.  When  he 
returned  he  would  see  how  thoroughly  she  had  followed 
his  directions. 

On  the  other  side  of  the  world  from  Yetta,  Longman 
was  leading  a  rough,  exciting  tent-life  among  danger 
ously  fanatic  natives.  It  would  have  been  hard  to 
imagine  two  more  sharply  contrasting  environments. 
He  never  dreamed  of  the  loving  devotion  which  was 
being  offered  him,  so  many  thousand  miles  away.  He 
did  not  suspect  how  his  occasional  letters,  in  reply  to 
her  weekly  ones,  fanned  this  flame.  He  was  wholly 
occupied  in  racing  against  time  and  difficulties  to  com 
plete  his  work. 

The  expedition  was  not  having  an  easy  time  of  it. 
The  ruins  about  which  they  were  digging  were  regarded 
by  the  natives  with  superstitious  veneration.  The 
little  group  of  scientists  had  only  a  score  of  unreliable 
soldiers  for  defence,  so  the  real  men  —  Le  Marquis 
d'Hauteville,  Chef  de  I' expedition,  a  wiry,  gray-haired 
veteran  of  the  Algerian  Wars ;  Delanoue,  a  dandified- 
looking  Parisian,  who  had  carved  his  name  as  an  ex 
plorer  in  all  sorts  of  outlandish  places;  Vibert,  the 
photographer,  and  Walter  —  had  their  hands  full. 
They  were  the  rampart,  behind  which  the  half-dozen 
querulous,  rather  old-maidish  specialists  measured 
skulls,  gathered  fragments  of  pottery,  took  rubbings  of 
inscriptions,  and  collected  folk-lore. 

It  is  very  much  easier  to  love  a  person  who  is  ab 
sent  than  to  live  amicably  at  close  quarters  with  his 
daily  faults  and  foibles.  As  the  months  passed, 
Walter  Longman  —  or  rather  the  ghost  which  Yetta 
conjured  up  to  that  name  —  took  on  new  graces,  was 
endowed  with  ever  more  brilliant  characteristics. 


258  COMRADE  YETTA 

Yetta  hardly  knew  the  real  man.  In  their  half-dozen 
meetings  she  had  seen  certain  charming  traits.  He 
came  to  typify  the  kind  of  life  she  would  like  to  lead. 
A  life  of  cleanliness  and  comfort,  but  free  from  the 
shame  of  luxury.  A  life  of  books,  but  so  close  and 
sympathetic  to  the  struggling  mass  of  humanity  as  to 
escape  the  reproach  of  pedantry. 

Her  dreams  of  him  —  thanks  to  his  absence  —  could 
not  be  contradicted.  If  an  act  in  the  life  about  her 
seemed  good,  she  did  not  doubt  that  Walter  could  and 
would  have  done  it  better.  Of  the  unpleasant  petti 
nesses  which  she  saw  among  her  associates,  she  was  sure 
that  he  was  free.  The  authors  she  read  seemed  to  her 
very  wise,  but  their  attainments  could  not  be  compared 
to  Walter's  mystic  wisdom.  It  is  very  easy  to  laugh  at 
such  folly  —  and  so  much  easier  to  cry. 

The  idolatrous  incense  which  she  burned  at  the  altar 
of  the  Absent  One  was  a  great  incentive  to  her  study. 
Knowledge  was  not  only  the  road  to  power,  but  also  to 
his  approbation.  But  his  greatest  contribution  was  the 
memory  of  his  scorn  for  intellectual  ruts,  for  cut-and- 
dried  formulae.  "You  can't  crowd  life  into  a  defini 
tion,"  he  had  said.  "  Beware  of  simple  explanations. 
Living  is  a  complex  business." 

Such  phrases  —  sticking  in  her  memory  like  illumi 
nated  mottoes  —  held  her  back  from  joining  the  Social 
ist  party.  Sooner  or  later  it  was  inevitable  that  she 
should  do  so.  She  was  a  logical  Socialist,  with  the 
logic  of  events.  It  would  have  been  difficult  to  erect 
any  other  structure  on  the  foundations  life  had  laid 
for  her.  She  was  a  machine  worker  who  had  revolted 
before  the  grinding  monotony  had  killed  her  faith  and 
vision.  She  could  still  hope.  She  had  the  insight  to 


YETTA'S  WORK  259 

see  beyond  the  personal  pettiness  of  squabbling  dogma 
tists  to  the  great  principles  of  Justice  and  Brotherhood, 
which  their  heated  advocacy  sometimes  obscures.  Her 
life  would  have  been  poorer  in  any  other  setting. 

But  it  was  a  real  gain  to  her  that  she  did  not  join 
the  party  hurriedly.  She  might  have  resisted  the 
urgings  of  Braun  longer  —  even  after  she  had  read 
largely  pro  and  con,  even  after  she  had  familiarized 
herself  with  the  traditional  theoretical  "  objections  to 
Socialism,"  and,  weighing  them  against  the  facts  of 
life,  which  she  saw  about  her,  the  bent  and  aged  women 
of  thirty,  the  young  men  smitten  with  tuberculosis, 
the  thousands  of  babies  that  never  grow  up,  had  found 
them  light  indeed  —  she  might  still  have  held  back 
longer  from  the  personal  and  entirely  illogical  reason 
that  Walter  had  never  joined  if  it  had  not  been  for  a 
dramatic  meeting  with  her  old  boss  —  Jake  Goldfogle. 

His  shop  had  failed  in  her  first  strike.  She  had  lost 
all  track  of  him. 

About  nine  o'clock  one  bitter  winter  night  she  was 
walking  home  along  Canal  Street.  The  row  of  push 
carts,  lit  by  flaring  oil  lamps,  were  doing  a  scant  busi 
ness.  It  was  too  cold  for  sidewalk  bargaining.  She 
was  moved  by  a  deep  pity  for  these  men  and  women, 
who  were  forced  out  on  such  a  night,  to  hawk  their 
wares.  It  was  not  only  the  victims  of  the  sweat-shop 
who  find  living  a  hard  matter.  Suddenly  her  notice 
fell  on  a  dilapidated  pedler,  who  was  holding  out  a 
meagre  tray  of  notions.  He  did  not  have  even  a  push 
cart.  A  heavy  black  patch  hid  one  side  of  his  face,  but 
she  recognized  Jake  at  once.  Her  first  impulse  was  to 
hurry  past  with  averted  face.  But  his  shivering  pov 
erty  —  he  had  no  overcoat  —  checked  her. 


260  COMRADE  YETTA 

"  Hello,  Mr.  Goldfogle." 

He  turned  his  unbandaged  eye  on  her  in  bewilder 
ment.  His  frost-bitten  face  flushed  with  resentment. 

"Come  on  and  have  a  cup  of  coffee,"  she  said.  "I 
want  to  talk  with  you." 

The  idea  of  coffee  stopped  the  curses  which  were  gath 
ering  on  his  tongue,  and,  ashamed  of  his  lack  of  spirit, 
he  followed  her.  They  sat  down  opposite  each  other  at 
a  dingy  little  tea-room  table.  Jake  remembered  Yetta 
as  a  frightened  shop-girl.  The  last  time  she  had  seen 
him,  he  had  threatened  her  with  arrest.  He  had 
solemnly  sworn  that  he  would  never  give  her  back  her 
job.  And  now  she  was  giving  him  a  cup  of  coffee. 
He  drank  it  in  silence.  Once  upon  a  time  he  had 
dreamed  of  marrying  her  as  though  it  would  be  a  great 
condescension. 

The  coffee  warmed  him  so  that  he  told  his  story. 
The  failure  had  been  complete.  He  and  his  sister  and 
brother-in-law  had  gone  back  to  the  machine.  The 
sister  had  given  out  first  with  the  East  Side  common 
place  —  a  cough.  For  a  while  the  two  men  had  stuck 
together,  once  more  a  little  money  had  begun  to  pile 
up.  Then  a  belt  broke;  the  flying  end  had  caught 
Jake  in  the  face.  He  lifted  up  the  black  patch  and 
showed  Yetta  the  horrible  scar  where  his  eye  had  been. 
When  he  had  come  out  of  the  hospital,  his  brother-in- 
law  had  disappeared.  For  a  while  Jake  had  hoped  to 
get  some  compensation  out  of  his  employer,  but  he 
had  fallen  into  the  clutches  of  a  " shyster  lawyer,"  who 
compromised  the  case  out  of  court  for  a  hundred  dollars 
and  kept  seventy-five  for  his  fee.  This  had  happened 
about  a  month  before.  Jake  had  been  dragging  out  a 
miserable  existence,  sleeping  in  the  lowest  doss-houses, 


YETTA'S  WORK  261 

and  of  the  stock  he  had  bought  with  his  twenty-five 
dollars,  the  half-filled  tray  was  all  that  remained.  And 
if  Yetta  had  not  started  the  strike,  he  would  have  been 
a  rich  man.  "Und  I  vas  in  luv  wit  you,  Yetta,"  he 
ended. 

It  happened  that  she  had  just  received  her  month's 
pay,  so  she  was  able  to  buy  Jake  an  overcoat  and  give 
him  a  few  dollars  for  meals  and  lodging.  And  the 
next  day  she  found  work  for  him  as  a  night  watchman. 

But  although  his  gratitude  for  this  job  was  volumi 
nous  it  did  not  ease  Yetta's  conscience  in  the  matter. 
There  was  something  sardonically  grotesque  in  the 
encounter.  It  convinced  her,  more  surely  than  books 
could  ever  have  done,  of  the  Socialist  doctrine  that  all 
life  is  knit  into  one  whole;  that  Jake,  just  as  much  as 
Mrs.  Cohen,  had  been  a  victim  of  a  vicious  system. 

"As  long  as  this  bitter  industrial  competition  con 
tinues,"  she  wrote  to  Walter,  "  there  are  bound  to  be 
such  pitiful  specimens  as  Jake.  You  see  a  lot  in  the 
papers  nowadays  about  how  the  trusts  are  eliminating 
competition.  The  more  I  think  about  that  the  more 
horrible  it  seems.  They  are  eliminating  competition 
in  the  sales  departments,  in  the  distribution  of  the 
product,  because  there  the  waste  is  in  dollars  and  cents. 
But  in  production  —  where  the  competitive  waste  is 
only  human  beings  —  the  struggle  is  as  bitter  as  ever. 
The  high-salaried,  '  gentlemanly '  managers  of  the 
different  plants  of  a  trust  cooperate  in  selling  and  in 
buying  raw  material,  but  in  the  actual  work  of  the  mills 
they  have  to  compete  to  see  who  can  exploit  the  workers 
hardest  —  just  as  Jake  was  driven  to  overwork  us  girls. 
I  don't  see  any  possible  cure  except  Socialism,  and  I'm 
going  to  join  the  party." 


262  COMRADE  YETTA 

Many  months  later,  when  the  courier  brought  this 
letter  into  the  camp  among  the  ancient  ruins,  the  exile 
opened  it  with  feverish  hands,  ran  his  fingers  down  page 
after  page  until  he  came  to  Mabel's  name.  It  was 
not  until  he  had  read  this  part  several  times  that  he 
gave  any  attention  to  the  fact  that  Yetta  had  become 
a  Socialist. 


CHAPTER  XX 

ISADORE   BRAUN 

IT  was  shortly  before  her  visit  to  Cos-Cob  that 
Isadore  Braun  asked  Yetta  to  marry  him. 

In  a  way  he  was  almost  ashamed  of  himself  for  do 
ing  so.  His  tempestuous  desire  for  her  was  something 
he  could  not  understand,  something  which  forcibly 
escaped  from  the  control  of  reason,  to  which  all  his 
life  had  been  submitted. 

Yetta  had  walked  into  his  cold,  impersonal  life  in  an 
utterly  disturbing  way.  It  was  as  if  some  sudden  leak 
had  let  a  glare  of  sunlight  into  a  photographer's  dark 
room.  All  the  care  which  had  been  expended  in  fitting 
that  laboratory  for  a  specific  —  and  valuable  —  piece 
of  work  was  rendered  useless. 

With  the  methodical  forethought  of  his  race  and  the 
narrow  vision  of  a  fanatic,  Isadore  had  arranged  his 
future.  He  had  planned  not  only  each  day's  work, 
but  his  life-work.  With  dogged  singleness  of  purpose 
he  had  trained  himself  to  be  an  efficient  machine.  Such 
an  irrational  thing  as  Love  had  no  place  in  his  scheme. 
To  be  sure,  he  believed  that  marriage  was  good.  Some 
time  —  say  at  thirty-five  —  he  would  look  around  for 
a  convenient  comrade,  a  woman  of  similar  ideals  and 
purpose,  and  they  would  mate  without  any  serious 

263 


264  COMRADE  YETTA 

derangement  in  the  life  of  either.  But  he  condemned 
Romance.  It  was  irrational. 

Romance  had  accepted  the  challenge  and  had  worsted 
him.  His  first  interest  in  the  Yetta  of  the  vest-makers' 
strike  had  turned  into  respect  and  admiration  —  and 
finally  into  something  much  more  serious  and  dynamic. 
It  was  not  until  he  caught  himself  neglecting  some  im 
portant  work  to  attend  a  meeting  where  nothing  called 
him  except  the  chance  for  a  few  words  with  her  that  he 
discovered  what  was  the  matter  with  him.  Again 
and  again  he  rallied  all  his  intellectual  forces  for  the 
combat,  but  always  after  a  short  struggle  he  found 
himself  flat  on  his  back,  with  Romance  performing  the 
dance  of  victory  on  his  chest. 

At  first  he  tried  to  comfort  himself  with  the  thought 
that  after  all  Yetta  was  just  such  a  mate  as  his  intellect 
would  have  chosen.  She  also  was  a  Socialist.  But 
he  was  too  honest  with  himself  to  admit  this  sophistry. 
It  was  not  because  of  her  theories  that  the  flame  burned 
within  him.  He  would  have  been  just  as  helpless, 
just  as  irrationally  enslaved,  if  she  had  been  a  chorus 
girl.  She  was  not  reason's  choice,  for  the  intellect  is 
colorless  and  Yetta  was  resplendent. 

To  admit  the  dominance  of  this  irrational  emotion 
was  to  abandon  all  his  gods,  to  turn  his  back  on  his 
only  religion.  It  is  hard  for  most  of  us  to  realize  the 
deep  tragedy  of  Isadore's  position.  Few  of  us  be 
lieve  ardently  in  anything.  We  have  a  comfortable 
ability  to  keep  our  faith  in  things  we  know  are  false, 
a  lazy  credulity  for  exploded  theories.  We  go  on 
burning  our  incense  at  shrines  the  gods  have  deserted. 
We  pretend  to  a  love  of  liberty  we  do  not  feel.  We 
are  inclined  to  laugh  at  the  spectacle  of  a  man  naive 


ISADORE  BRAUN  265 

enough  really  to  care,  to  rend  himself  in  a  passionate 
quest  for  Truth  —  and  may  God  have  mercy  on  such 
of  us. 

It  was  a  month  or  more  before  Isadore  surrendered 
to  unreason.  It  was  a  defeat  which  told  on  him  in 
shrunken  cheeks.  There  were  some  who  thought  he 
was  sick.  But  he  knew  better.  Absolute  reason,  the 
god  on  whom  he  had  staked  his  faith,  was  crumbling. 
Longman's  talk  about  the  lack  of  logic  in  life  had 
seemed  to  him  drivel.  But  now  reason  —  the  all- 
powerful  deity  —  had  gone  down  before  the  non-in 
tellectual  gleam  in  a  young  woman's  eye,  had  turned 
tail  and  fled  before  the  curve  and  color  of  a  cheek. 

He  tried  to  propose  by  letter.  Night  after  night  in 
his  dismal,  unkempt  furnished  room,  he  laid  out  his 
writing-paper.  Sometimes  he  scribbled  furiously, 
pouring  it  all  out  on  paper  predestined  to  be  crumpled 
up  and  thrown  away.  More  often  he  chewed  the  end 
of  his  pen  in  a  sort  of  mechanical  tongue-tiedness. 

And  then  one  day  —  to  his  complete  surprise  —  he 
proposed  to  her  in  the  office  of  the  Woman's  Trade 
Union  League.  They  had  gone  into  the  committee- 
room  to  consult  over  the  " demands"  for  the  Skirt- 
makers'  Union.  Yetta  had  drawn  up  a  rough  copy 
and  Isadore  was  to  put  them  into  more  legal  shape. 
They  were  leaning  together  over  the  big  table  under 
the  great  picture  of  Jeanne  d'Arc,  when  the  grace  of 
Yetta' s  wrist  intruded  between  his  consciousness  and 
the  troubles  of  the  skirt-makers.  He  was  always  dis 
covering  some  such  new  attractiveness  about  her. 

"Good  God!"  he  exclaimed,  straightening  up  in 
vexation  of  spirit. 

" What's  the  matter?"  Yetta  asked. 


266  COMRADE  YETTA 

Isadore  realized  that  this  was  neither  the  time  nor 
the  place,  that  neither  of  them  was  in  the  right  mood, 
but  he  could  not  help  telling  her. 

Yetta  stopped  him  as  soon  as  her  amazement  had 
given  place  to  understanding.  With  the  simple  direct 
ness  which  was  her  most  outstanding  characteristic, 
she  refused  even  to  consider  his  suggestion.  Em 
phatically  she  did  not  love  him. 

For  a  moment  it  seemed  tremendously  important 
to  Isadore  to  light  a  cigarette  without  letting  his  hand 
give  way  to  its  insane  desire  to  tremble.  When  it 
was  lit,  he  looked  Yetta  squarely  in  the  eyes  and  knew 
there  was  no  use  in  argument. 

"Well,"  he  said,  after  a  few  puffs,  "let's  finish  up 
these  demands." 

The  incident  brought  their  cordial  intimacy  to  an 
end.  Yetta  no  longer  called  him  by  his  first  name. 
As  before,  their  work  threw  them  frequently  together. 
Yetta,  at  first,  was  afraid  of  a  fresh  outbreak  —  and 
so  was  Isadore.  He  had  lost  faith  in  his  self-control. 
But  no  outsider  could  have  guessed  the  constraint 
which  underlay  their  comradely  intercourse. 

Isadore  was  as  much  in  love  as  Walter  had  been 
with  Mabel,  but  he  was  of  a  more  masterful  disposi 
tion.  The  Work,  to  which  he  and  Yetta  had  dedicated 
their  lives,  was  more  important  than  personal  pain. 
When  the  business  of  the  day  required  him  to  see  her, 
he  did  not  shirk  it,  but  he  no  longer  sought  her  out. 
If  she  did  not  love  him,  that  ended  it.  He  did  not 
want  the  hollow  mockery  of  friendship. 

Yetta's  heart  was  full  to  overflowing  with  her  ro 
mantic  dream  of  Walter.  Isadore,  the  real,  the  daily, 
had  no  chance.  If  some  one  had  asked  her  about  him, 


ISADORE  BRAUN  267 

she  would  have  described  him  in  glowing  terms,  with 
an  enthusiastic  tribute  to  his  unusual  loyalty  and 
ability.  Her  respect  for  him  was  deep.  There  was 
no  man  of  her  race  nor  near  her  own  age  whom  she  held 
in  such  high  esteem.  But  when  it  came  to  loving  him, 
—  unfortunately  he  was  real. 

His  proposal  had  seemed  to  her  almost  preposterous. 
Not  that  she  felt  herself  too  good  for  him.  On  the 
contrary  her  love  for  Walter  had  increased  her  very 
real  humility.  It  was  the  concreteness  of  his  offer 
that  shocked  her. 

She  rarely  looked  forward  to  Walter's  return,  and 
when  she  did,  it  was  with  no  definite  visualizing  thought 
of  marriage.  The  concept  of  sex  was  vague  to  her  — 
and  decidedly  fearsome.  Not  even  Harry  Klein,  her 
first  lover  —  and  she  always  thought  of  him  as  an  in 
cident  in  a  dim  and  very  remote  past  —  had  really 
stirred  her  woman's  nature.  He  had  appealed  to  her 
as  an  instrument,  a  key  by  which  to  escape  from  her 
dungeon.  The  sentiments,  which  his  meagre  caresses 
had  raised,  had  by  the  fright  of  the  adventure  been 
driven  back  in  dismay. 

Sometimes,  to  be  sure,  a  sort  of  sweet  dizziness  over 
came  her  when  she  remembered  how  Walter  had  kissed 
her  hand.  The  spot  below  the  middle  finger  of  her  left 
hand  which  his  lips  had  touched  was  a  holy  place. 
But  more  often  she  thought  of  his  words.  When  in 
her  dreams  he  seemed  nearest,  he  was  halfway  across 
the  room,  in  the  big  leather  chair,  while  she  was 
curled  up  on  the  window-seat.  She  was  not  yet 
twenty-one.  Her  girlhood  had  been  sacrificed  to  the 
machine.  Orderly,  symmetrical  development  had  been 
impossible.  Now  that  she  was  a  woman  in  body,  in 


COMRADE  YETTA 


mind,  in  work,  her  imagination  was  still  in  the  first 
flower  of  adolescence. 

On  the  mantelpiece  of  his  old  room,  where  she  lived, 
a  snapshot  of  the  white  men  of  the  Expedition  leaned 
against  the  cow-faced  god  of  the  Haktites.  Like 
Saul  of  old,  Walter  towered  head  and  shoulders  above 
his  mates.  Khaki  and  a  pith  helmet  are  not  exactly 
silver  armor  —  but  to  Yetta  he  seemed  the  Shining 
Prince.  And  Isadore  wanted  her  to  live  with  him  in 
an  East  Side  flat. 

If  falling  in  love  with  her  had  disturbed  Isadore, 
his  inability  to  put  her  out  of  his  mind  after  her  em 
phatic  refusal  troubled  him  a  thousand  times  more. 
He  got  no  ease  from  his  pain  except  in  work.  The 
anxiety  of  his  friends  increased.  But,  brushing  aside 
their  protests,  he  sought  out  ever  new  activities.  He 
hated  to  be  idle,  he  came  to  fear  being  alone  in  his 
room.  But  not  even  the  most  strenuous  endeavor  to 
forget  relieved  him. 

In  the  beautifully  illogical  way  life  has,  help  came  to 
Isadore  from  a  source  he  would  never  have  dreamed 
of.  He  came  home  early  one  night  to  write  an  article 
for  the  Forwaertz.  To  his  dismay  he  found  that  he  had 
left  his  notes  in  the  office.  The  article  would  have  to 
wait,  and  here  he  was  with  nothing  to  do,  alone  in  his 
room,  where  of  all  places  he  found  it  hardest  to  escape 
from  the  aching  hunger  of  his  heart,  the  sad  confu 
sion  of  his  thoughts. 

It  was  not  much  of  a  room  —  an  iron  cot,  a  big  deal 
table,  a  few  cheap  chairs  and  bookcases.  It  was  not 
even  decently  clean.  In  the  five  years  he  had  lived 
there  he  had  been  quite  oblivious  to  its  sordidness. 
But  of  late  it  had  become  abhorrent  to  him.  He  was 


ISADORE  BRAUN  269 

already  half  undressed.  The  bitter  summer  heat  had 
driven  the  tenement  dwellers  out  on  the  street.  The 
perspiring  humanity  which  crowded  the  sidewalks 
offered  no  comfortable  escape. 

He  turned  to  his  bookcases.  But  he  needed  some 
thing  of  more  compelling  interest  than  the  census  and 
immigration  reports  to  fill  the  time  till  sleep  would 
come.  Most  of  his  little  library  were  reference  books, 
the  rest  he  had  read  and  reread.  On  the  bottom  shelf 
was  a  bundle  he  had  never  unwrapped.  They  were 
books  Walter  had  given  him  after  one  of  their  dis 
cussions  over  the  meaning  of  Life.  He  had  never 
read  them,  because  he  was  sure  he  would  find  no  interest 
in  the  hodge-podge,  haphazard  kind  of  thinking  which 
Walter  seemed  to  enjoy.  He  pulled  them  out  now  — 
at  least  they  would  offer  the  interest  of  novelty.  The 
first  book  he  opened  was  Henri  Bergson's  L' Evolution 
Creafrice.  Walter,  as  was  his  custom,  had  annotated 
it  copiously.  On  the  fly-page  he  had  written,  "A 
superb  discussion  of  the  limitations  of  Pure  Reason." 
The  phrase  caught  Isadore's  eye  as  he  listlessly  read 
the  note.  Was  not  this  " limitation"  of  reason  the 
very  thing  that  was  troubling  him  ? 

No  book  that  he  had  read  in  years  seemed  to  vibrate 
so  compellingly  with  a  sense  of  actuality.  This  was 
partly  due  no  doubt  to  the  master  craftsmanship  of 
the  author.  But  very  likely  it  would  have  made  no 
impression  on  Isadore  if  he  had  read  it  when  Walter 
had  asked  him  to.  The  jar  and  conflict  of  the  last 
few  months  had  opened  up  the  compartments  of  his 
brain  to  a  long-lost  receptivity.  The  facts  of  life  had 
shaken  his  intellectual  structure  until  he  was  prepared 
to  understand. 


270  COMRADE  YETTA 

This  suave  and  erudite  Frenchman  was  calmly 
announcing  that  the  Age  of  Reason  was  a  myth,  rational 
ism  a  superstition.  From  every  field  of  human  knowl 
edge  Bergson  was  gathering  his  evidence,  from  the 
microscopic  data  of  biology  to  the  gigantic  stellar  facts 
beyond  our  vision,  with  merciless  logic  he  was  proving 
that  the  instrument  with  which  we  reason  is  not 
divine.  "The  God  which  has  failed  you,"  he  said  to 
Isadore,  "is  a  false  god.  The  brain,  with  which  you 
created  it,  is  only  a  faulty  animal  instrument,  as  liable 
to  error  as  your  eyes,  for  which  you  have  been  com 
pelled  to  buy  rectifying  glasses." 

While  the  message  of  Bergson  is  iconoclastic,  a 
titanic  warfare  against  the  formal  gods,  it  is  by  no 
means  destructive.  It  holds  a  more  magnificent,  a 
more  humanly  satisfying  optimism  than  metaphysics 
has  dared,  a  promise  of  greater  intimacy  with  the 
living  truth  than  cold  reason  ever  formulated.  Above 
all  it  offered  to  Isadore  to  restore  his  self-respect. 

He  had  to  refill  his  lamp  before  he  finished  the  book. 
And  when  he  had  reached  the  end,  he  could  not  sleep. 
A  strange  bodily  unrest  seized  him.  He  wanted  to 
get  away.  When  the  heavens  opened  and  a  great 
light  shone  upon  Saul  of  Tarsus,  he  felt  at  once  the 
need  of  going  out  to  some  distant  desert  place  to  re 
arrange  his  life  in  accordance  with  the  new  light. 
Isadore  also  had  need  of  an  Arabia. 

Some  time  before  he  had  received  an  invitation  to 
visit  a  Socialist  magazine  writer  named  Paulding  at 
his  lake-side  camp  in  the  Adirondacks.  Although 
Isadore  knew  the  invitation  had  been  sincere,  that  he 
would  be  welcome,  he  had  refused  it,  because  in  his 
troubled  frame  of  mind  he  had  been  frightened  by  the 


ISADORE  BRAUN  271 

bare  idea  of  idleness.  He  had  been  afraid  to  leave 
the  rush  of  work.  Now  there  was  nothing  he  wanted 
more.  So  as  dawn  was  breaking  over  the  city,  he 
packed  his  bag,  putting  in  with  care  the  books  Walter 
had  given  him,  and  telegraphing  that  he  had  changed 
his  mind,  set  out. 

It  was  the  first  real  vacation  he  had  ever  taken. 
All  the  " country"  he  had  seen  had  been  from  car 
windows  and  the  crumpled  patches  one  encounters  on 
labor-union  picnics.  The  camp  was  the  barest  of 
log-cabins.  Mrs.  Paulding  was  also  a  writer,  and  all 
the  mornings  his  hosts  were  busy  over  their  type 
writers.  So  Isadore  was  much  by  himself.  It  was 
an  entirely  new  experience  for  him  to  chop  firewood. 
It  took  a  week  or  more  before  he  lost  his  diffidence 
before  the  pine  trees.  It  was  even  longer  before  he 
became  sufficiently  familiar  with  the  canoe  to  enjoy 
being  out  of  sight  of  the  landing.  Paulding  was  an 
enthusiastic  nature  lover,  and  the  struggles  and  ad 
ventures  of  the  myriad  animals  of  the  forest  and  the 
lake  which  he  pointed  out  were  like  enchanting  fairy 
stories.  Isadore  had  read  such  things  in  books,  but 
it  was  endlessly  strange  for  him  to  watch  them  in 
process.  And  all  this  strangeness  helped  him  to 
the  rest  which,  in  spite  of  his  denials,  he  desperately 
needed. 

Gradually,  as  the  weeks  slipped  by,  he  fought  his 
way  to  a  new  outlook  on  life.  Bergson  and  the  prag- 
matists  had  shaken  him  out  of  his  intellectual  rut. 
His  dogmatism  had  resulted  from  his  manner  of  life. 
He  had  begun  to  think  about  social  problems  before 
he  had  come  into  intimate  contact  with  social  facts. 
His  development  had  been  the  opposite  of  Yetta's. 


272  COMRADE  YETTA 

She  had  begun  with  facts  and  had  judged  all  theories 
by  them.  He,  having  accepted  a  philosophy  while 
still  in  the  cloistered  life  of  college,  had  been  too  busy 
preaching  it  to  have  much  time  to  observe  the  com 
plex  reality  of  life.  Bergson  and  his  love  for  Yetta 
had  jolted  him  out  of  this  attitude.  He  was  man 
enough  to  see  his  error  and  correct  it. 

When  he  returned  to  the  city  in  the  fall,  his  comrades 
noticed  the  change  in  him.  His  former  domineering 
conviction  that  he  was  right  had  given  place  to  a 
gentler,  more  tolerant,  and  smiling  self-confidence. 
He  was  no  longer  a  doctrinaire.  He  was  less  cock 
sure,  but  more  certain.  His  native  sympathy  with 
suffering  humanity,  which  had  been  the  real  motive 
of  his  Socialism  and  which  for  years  he  had  suppressed 
as  sentimental,  came  to  life  again.  It  was  in  his  public 
speaking  that  the  new  man  showed  clearest.  He  no 
longer  made  his  appeal  solely  to  reason;  there  was 
more  red  blood  in  his  discourse,  more  pulsing  life  in 
his  words.  He  had  come  to  see  that  his  hearers  must 
feel  as  well  as  think.  His  Socialism  had  lost  some  of 
its  sharp  definitions,  some  of  its  logical  simplicity, 
but  it  had  come  to  bear  a  closer  similitude  to  life. 

One  day,  shortly  after  his  return,  while  walking, 
down  the  Bowery  with  a  friend,  he  stopped  and  gave 
a  nickel  to  an  alcoholic-looking  tramp.  His  friend 
expostulated.  Such  erratic  almsgiving  was  worse 
than  useless.  It  encouraged  vagrancy;  it  was  un 
scientific,  unreasonable.  Suddenly  Isadore  realized 
the  change  which  had  come  over  him.  He  grinned 
defiantly.  "The  poor  devil,"  he  explained,  " looked 
as  if  he  wanted  a  drink."  His  friend  was  scandalized. 
But  if  Walter  had  heard  of  the  incident,  he  would 


ISADORE  BRAUN  273 

have  rejoiced  as  the  Angels  in  Heaven  rejoice  when  a 
lost  lamb  finds  the  fold. 

The  change  in  Isadore  had  been  more  concrete  than 
the  acceptation  of  a  new  outlook  on  life.  Up  in  the 
mountains  he  had  questioned  not  only  his  metaphysics, 
but  his  habits.  He  had  pondered  over  the  practical 
tactics  of  Socialism  as  well  as  its  philosophy.  The 
loosening  of  his  fundamental  concepts  had  solidified 
his  attitude  towards  practical  problems.  The  rather 
diffuse  propaganda  work  he  had  been  doing  no  longer 
satisfied  him.  He  wanted  to  concentrate  on  one 
tangible  thing.  And  it  seemed  to  him  that  what  the 
movement  needed  more  than  anything  else  was  a  daily 
English  paper.  Back  in  New  York,  with  a  new  and 
unconquerable  enthusiasm,  he  set  himself  to  this  task. 

But  if  his  new  point  of  view  had  healed  his  intel 
lectual  humiliation,  it  in  no  wise  softened  the  torture 
of  Yetta's  indifference.  Day  after  day,  month  after 
month,  he  lived  with  the  ache  of  his  love.  But  he 
came  to  laugh  more  readily,  became  less  of  a  machine 
and  more  of  a  man. 

It  was  several  months  after  Yetta's  refusal  before 
he  reopened  the  subject.  He  did  it  by  a  letter  —  so 
worded  that  it  required  no  reply.  He  would  not 
bother  her,  he  wrote,  with  repeated  urgings.  He  could 
not  see  the  use  of  pleading.  They  were  grown  up,  too 
serious-minded  to  act  such  a  comedy.  But  he  wanted 
her  to  know  that  he  was  steadfast.  If  in  the  future 
her  regard  for  him  grew  into  the  love  he  hungered  for,  he 
trusted  that  she  would  tell  him.  And  so  the  matter  rested. 

Other  suitors  sprang  up  a-plenty,  and  their  noisy 
importunity  made  Yetta  very  thankful  to  Isadore  for 
his  dignified  reserve. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

THE  STAR 

THE  second  summer  after  Walter  had  left,  a  desper 
ate  and  successful  strike  of  the  cloak-makers  brought 
Yetta' s  name  once  more  into  the  papers.  Mrs.  Kar- 
ner  used  the  opportunity  to  open  a  new  line  of  work 
to  Yetta. 

Mr.  Karner  owned  The  Star  —  the  " yellowest" 
paper  in  the  city.  It  was  not  only  vulgar  to  the  edge 
of  obscenity,  it  was  notoriously  corrupt  in  politics. 
Being  a  one-cent  paper,  it  of  course  posed  as  a  "  friend 
of  the  working-man,"  but  it  stood  —  unless  the  other 
side  had  collected  an  unusually  large  campaign  fund  — 
for  Tammany  Hall  and  the  traction  interests. 

One  morning  at  breakfast  —  while  the  cloak-makers' 
Strike  was  a  "live"  news  item  —  Mr.  Karner  spoke 
enviously  of  a  woman  who  gave  sentimental  advice  to 
love-lorn  damsels  on  the  magazine  page  of  his  keenest 
rival. 

"I  wish  I  could  find  some  counter  attraction,"  he 
said.  "Our  circulation  among  working  girls  is  pitiful." 

"Why  don't  you  try  Yetta  Rayefsky  ?"  Mrs.  Karner 
suggested.  "All  the  East  Side  girls  know  her.  Do 
you  happen  to  be  advocating  trade-unions  this  month  ?  " 

"Mildly  — as  usual." 

"Yetta  is  keen  on  that.     You  remember  her.     She 

274 


THE  STAR  275 

was  out  at  Cos-Cob  last  summer.  Rather  caught 
your  eye,  I  think." 

"That  little  Jewess?  She  was  good-looking.  Has 
she  any  other  qualifications  as  a  journalist  ?" 

Mrs.  Karner  shrugged  her  shoulders. 

"I  thought  you  prided  yourself  on  developing  raw 
material." 

Two  days  later  Yetta  was  summoned  to  Mr.  Kar- 
ner's  office.  She  went  to  the  appointment,  wondering 
what  the  great  newspaper  man  could  want  of  her  — 
hoping  that  she  might  interest  him  in  her  girls. 

"Glad  to  see  you/'  Mr.  Karner  said  cordially  as 
she  was  ushered  into  his  beautifully  furnished  sanctum. 
"This  cloak-makers'  strike  is  a  big  story.  But  we're 
not  making  the  most  of  it.  There's  more  in  it  than 
news  copy. 

"There  ought  to  be  something  for  our  magazine 
page.  I  don't  know  whether  you've  ever  read  it,  but 
it's  the  page  that  gets  the  women.  They're  not  in 
terested  in  arguments  —  not  much  in  facts.  It's  the 
human  interest  story  —  something  to  make  them  cry 
—  that  gets  over  with  them.  About  their  own  people. 
If  they  say  'That's  just  like  Sadie  or  Flossie,'  it's  the 
right  thing  for  us.  We're  always  looking  for  that  kind 
of  copy. 

"There  must  be  some  stories  in  this  strike.  Couldn't 
you  give  us  two  or  three?" 

Yetta  was  surprised  at  the  offer  and  decidedly  un 
certain. 

"It  won't  do  any  harm  to  try,"  he  urged  her. 

He  pressed  a  button,  and  when  a  rotund,  merry- 
looking  man  appeared,  he  introduced  him. 

"Mr.  Brace,  this  is  Miss  Rayefsky.     She  has  just 


276  COMRADE  YETTA 

promised  to  send  us  some  copy  about  the  cloak-makers' 
strike  for  your  magazine  page.'7 

They  discussed  it  for  a  few  minutes,  and  when  Yetta 
had  gone,  Karner  kept  Brace  a  moment. 

"My  wife,"  he  said,  " thinks  we  could  train  this 
Ray ef sky  girl  to  write.  If  we  could  get  some  one  to 
put  a  crimp  in  Lilian  Leberwurtz'  'Balm  for  Busted 
Bussums,'  it  would  help  a  lot.  Look  over  her  copy 
when  it  comes  in.  Buy  enough  anyhow  to  pay  her  for 
her  trouble.  And  if  it  shows  any  promise,  see  what 
you  can  make  of  her.  And  keep  me  informed." 

Yetta  floated  out  of  The  Star  office  on  clouds.  In 
a  sudden  flame  of  enthusiasm  she  pictured  herself  as 
a  great  author.  But  as  she  went  home  a  horrible 
doubt  struck  her  —  she  might  fail.  The  doubt  in 
creased  as  she  laid  out  a  sheet  of  paper. 

After  much  hesitation  and  several  false  starts,  she 
decided  to  stick  as  closely  as  might  be  to  reality.  She 
wrote  the  story  of  one  of  her  girls  who,  although  she 
worked  on  the  highest-priced  opera-cloaks,  was  so 
poor  that  she  had  never  worn  any  wrap  but  a  frayed 
old  shawl. 

It  was  natural  for  Yetta  to  be  simple  and  direct. 
The  copious  notes  she  had  written  in  connection  with 
her  study  had  taught  her  some  familiarity  with  her 
pen.  Above  all,  her  public  speaking  had  helped  her. 
It  had  taught  her  to  think  ahead  and  plan  her  climax 
in  advance.  The  women  who  would  read  the  maga 
zine  page  were  —  or  had  been  —  shop-girls,  such  as 
the  audiences  she  spoke  to  night  after  night.  And 
Mr.  Brace  had  told  her  to  write  just  as  she  talked. 

At  last  she  mailed  three  sketches.  Within  twenty- 
four  hours  she  received  a  letter  from  Mr.  Brace  asking 


THE  STAR  277 

her  to  come  and  talk  them  over.  She  had  a  difficult 
time  looking  unconcerned  as  she  entered  The  Star 
office.  Her  stories  had  seemed  rather  good  when  she 
had  finished  them,  but  they  had  so  sunk  in  her  estima 
tion  by  this  time  that  she  wished  she  had  not  written 
them.  This  sinking  process  was  most  rapid  during 
the  few  minutes  she  was  kept  waiting  on  a  bench  in  the 
big  reporters'  room  outside  the  glass  door  of  Mr. 
Brace's  private  office. 

There  were  long  tables  on  two  sides  of  the  room ;  they 
were  divided  off  into  sections  by  little  railings.  Most 
of  the  places  were  filled  by  reporters  writing  feverishly 
on  yellow  copy  paper  or  banging  away  at  typewriters. 
Boys  and  men  rushed  about,  carrying  copy  or  proof 
in  and  out  of  the  various  glass  doors  about  the  room. 
Almost  every  one  looked  curiously  at  Yetta  and  the 
others  on  the  waiting  bench.  There  were  three  people 
ahead  of  her :  a  woman  who  looked  like  an  actress,  a 
white-haired  old  man,  with  a  beard  almost  to  his  belt. 
He  held  a  heavy  manuscript  on  his  knees  with  great 
care,  evidently  afraid  some  one  would  steal  it.  Next 
to  her  was  a  perspiring  young  curate  in  a  clerical 
collar. 

Presently  Mr.  Brace  ushered  a  disappointed  poet 
out  of  his  office  and  called  "Miss  Rayefsky."  "By 
appointment,"  he  added,  as  those  who  were  ahead  of 
her  moved  restlessly  in  protest. 

He  pulled  up  a  chair  for  her  beside  his  desk,  and 
picking  up  his  blue  pencil,  began  a  little  lecture  on  the 
advertising  rate  of  the  magazine  page.  It  was  ten 
cents  a  word.  His  blue  pencil  scratched  out  a  sentence 
from  one  of  her  stories.  It  would  certainly  not  do 
any  one  a  dollar  and  a  half's  worth  of  good.  It  began 


278  COMRADE  YETTA 

to  look  to  Yetta  as  if  there  would  be  nothing  left  ex 
cept  blue  pencil  marks.  But  he  glowed  with  pleasure 
during  the  process.  When  he  had  come  to  the  end,  he 
announced  with  pride  that  he  had  killed  at  least  twenty- 
five  dollars'  worth  of  padding.  She  wished  he  would 
let  her  go  quickly.  She  was  afraid  she  might  cry  if 
he  jeered  at  her  any  more. 

"I  hope  we  can  arrange  for  some  more  of  this  soon," 
he  said  abruptly,  handing  her  a  check. 

It  was  for  seventy-five  dollars  !  She  had  never  had 
so  much  money  at  one  time  before  in  her  life.  And  she 
had  earned  it  in  four  days  ! 

But  this  was  a  small  matter  beside  seeing  her  story 
in  print  that  afternoon.  Here  was  a  tangible  sign  of 
her  progress  to  send  Walter.  She  was  just  reaching 
the  end  of  his  outline  of  study,  and  she  was  already 
writing  for  the  papers !  Her  pride  was  somewhat 
tempered  as  she  reread  her  story  and  realized  how 
much  it  had  been  improved  by  Mr.  Brace's  vigorous 
slashing. 

Her  new  sense  of  importance  became  almost  op 
pressive  when,  a  few  days  later,  they  offered  her  a 
contract  at  what  seemed  to  her  a  magnificent  salary 
—  to  conduct  a  column  on  Working-girls'  Worries. 

Mabel  also  was  enthusiastic  about  it.  It  was  a 
great  and  unexpected  chance  to  give  publicity  to  their 
work  of  organizing  women.  The  Star  had  more  than  a 
million  readers.  Yetta  could  never  have  hoped  to 
reach  so  large  an  audience  with  her  voice. 

But  when  Isadore  saw  the  flaring  posters  which 
blossomed  out  on  the  East  Side,  announcing  that  Yetta 
Rayefsky  was  writing  daily  and  exclusively  for  The 
Evening  Star,  he  was  mightily  disturbed.  Such  con- 


THE  STAR  -     279 


scienceless  journalism  as  Mr.  Karner's  seemed  to  him 
the  worst  crime  of  our  civilization.  He  could  hardly 
believe  that  Yetta  had  thrown  in  her  lot  with  it.  It 
shook  him  out  of  his  reserve,  and  he  rushed  over  to  her 
room. 

In  her  new  pride,  in  the  excitement  of  her  new  career, 
Yetta  seemed  more  disturbingly  beautiful  to  him  than 
ever.  Face  to  face  with  her  he  forgot  all  his  carefully 
thought-out  arguments. 

11  Oh,  Yetta,"  he  blurted  out,  "is  it  really  true  that 
you're  going  to  work  on  that  dirty  paper?" 

"They  have  offered  to  let  me  conduct  a  column  for 
working  girls,  and  I've  accepted,"  she  replied  defiantly. 

"You  know  it's  a  dirty  paper,"  he  stuck  to  his  point. 
"Dirty  in  every  way,  —  in  its  news,  in  its  advertise 
ments.  Most  of  all  in  its  rotten  politics.  These  yellow 
journals  are  the  worst  enemy  Socialism  has  to  face. 
They  mislead  the  people.  They're  paid  to.  All  the 
editors  are  crooked  —  sold  out.  But  Karner's  the 
worst." 

"I  haven't  anything  to  do  with  their  news  nor  their 
advertising,  nor  with  Mr.  Karner's  politics  —  I've 
been  talking  to  working  girls  as  hard  as  I  know  how 
for  the  last  two  years.  Suddenly  I  get  a  chance  to 
speak  louder,  so  that  thousands  will  hear.  I  might 
just  as  well  refuse  to  speak  in  some  of  the  East  Side 
halls,  because  on  other  nights  they  are  used  for  rotten 
dances." 

"Oh,  Yetta,"  he  broke  in,  "you  don't  know  what 
you  are  doing.  I  know  it  isn't  the  salary  that  makes 
you  do  it.  But  that's  sure  to  be  big.  And  Karner's 
not  a  philanthropist ;  he's  not  giving  you  money  for 
nothing.  He's  buying  something.  You've  got  to 


280  COMRADE  YETTA 

give  him  his  money's  worth.  He's  buying  your  name. 
He's  after  circulation.  He's  using  your  name  —  have 
you  seen  the  posters?  He's  using  your  popularity, 
Yetta,  to  sell  his  dirty  paper  to  our  people.  He's 
paying  you  to  persuade  our  working  girls  to  read  the 
filthiest  paper  in  New  York.  Yetta,  you  don't  realize 
what  it  means.  It's  a  sort  of  betrayal  — " 

"Are  you  through?"  she  interrupted  angrily. 

"No,  I'm  not.  I've  got  to  say  it  all.  Not  because 
it's  you  and  me,  Yetta,  but  Comrade  to  Comrade, 
because  we're  both  Socialists.  They  won't  let  you 
say  what  you  want  to.  No  capitalist  paper  could, 
least  of  all  this  rotten  one.  If  the  class  struggle 
means  anything  at  all,  it  means  that  they  are  our 
enemies.  They  won't  pay  you  to  fight  against  them. 
They'll  tie  you  up  with  some  sort  of  a  contract  and  gag 
you.  They  are  bribing  you,  fooling  you  with  the  prom 
ise  of  a  big  audience.  But  they  won't  —  can't  —  let 
you  say  what  you  believe." 

"Mr.  Braun,"  she  said,  trying  hard  to  keep  her 
temper,  but  at  the  same  time  to  annihilate  him,  "I've 
talked  this  over  with  a  number  of  friends.  They  all 
urged  me  to  accept.  So  you  see  there  is  room  for 
difference  of  opinion.  You  are  the  only  one  who  has 
opposed  it.  Much  as  I  respect  your  opinion  in  most 
matters,  in  this  case  I  must  — " 

"No.  You  must  not!"  he  stormed,  jumping  up 
and  losing  control  of  himself  more  than  ever  before. 
"I  say  you  must  not." 

"What  right  have  you  — " 

"Right?  Who's  got  a  better  right?  You  know  I 
love  you.  I'd  rather  a  thousand  times  see  myself  dis 
graced  than  you,  Yetta.  What  do  Mabel  Train  and 


THE  STAR  281 

the  other  women  care  ?  They  see  a  chance  to  advertise 
their  pet  scheme.  What  do  they  care  about  your 
reputation,  your  self-respect?  They  think  it  will  be 
good  for  their  little  Trade  Union  League.  But  I  see 
you,  Yetta  —  selling  yourself  to  a  bunch  of  crooks  — 
not  being  able  to  do  the  good  you  want  to  —  and  always 
with  the  shame  of  it  on  you  !  Oh,  it's  too  terrible." 

He  sank  down  in  the  chair,  his  head  in  his  hands. 
Yetta's  hard  words  melted  as  she  saw  how  he  was 
suffering. 

"I'm  sorry  we  can't  agree  on  this,  Comrade,"  she 
said.  "We  do  on  most  things.  Of  course  I  may  be 
making  a  mistake.  But  I've  got  to  do  what  seems 
right  to  me  —  haven't  I ?" 

"Yetta,"  he  said,  looking  up  at  her  suddenly,  "are 
you  in  love  with  Walter  Longman  ?" 

She  stiffened  up  at  the  question,  but  Isadore  cut 
short  her  indignation. 

"Oh,  I  know,  Yetta.  Just  loving  you  doesn't  give 
me  a  right  to  ask  that  question.  But  sometimes  I've 
thought  you  loved  Walter.  He's  my  best  friend.  He 
wouldn't  want  you  to  go  into  this." 

He  looked  at  her  tensely.  It  was  a  minute  before 
she  took  up  his  challenge. 

"I  care  a  great  deal  for  Walter's  good  opinion,"  her 
voice  was  low,  but  even.  "I  am  quite  sure  he  would 
be  glad  I  had  this  chance.  But  even  if  he  thought  it 
was  unwise  for  me  to  accept  it,  he  would  not  try  to 
browbeat  me." 

Isadore  had  shot  his  last  bolt,  it  had  rebounded  on 
his  own  head.  He  fumbled  for  his  hat. 

"Good  night,  Yetta,"  he  said. 

"Good  night,  Mr.  Braun." 


282  COMRADE  YETTA 

The  first  month,  Mr.  Brace  went  over  Yetta's  con 
tributions  in  detail,  cramming  into  her  all  the  advice 
he  could  think  of.  About  the  time  his  stock  of  jour 
nalistic  epigrams  ran  out,  the  reports  from  the  cir 
culation  manager  were  so  favorable,  that  he  decided 
he  could  give  his  attention  to  other  things.  Mr. 
Brace,  like  all  good  newspaper  men,  was  a  mystic 
in  such  matters.  God  only  knows  what  the  public 
will  like.  It  was  his  business  to  scatter  seeds.  If 
they  took  root  and  grew  into  "  circulation, "  he  had 
sense  enough  to  leave  them  alone.  And  Yetta's  column 
had  "  caught  on." 

At  the  end  of  three  months  the  contract  was  renewed 
with  a  substantial  increase  in  salary.  The  posters 
which  advertised  her  work  became  more  flamboyant. 
The  size  of  her  mail  grew  daily.  The  letters  dealt 
with  all  the  worries  working  girls  are  heirs  to.  Some 
of  them  were  frivolous,  most  were  commonplace.  But 
once  in  a  while  among  the  misspelt,  poorly  written 
scrawls,  there  would  be  a  throbbing  story  of  life. 
Such  letters  tore  at  Yetta's  heart  —  giving  her  new 
determinations,  new  enthusiasm  for  her  work.  As 
their  number  increased  Yetta  knew  that  her  audience, 
her  influence,  was  growing.  The  Fates  were  smiling 
at  her.  She  was  earning  more  money  than  she  had 
ever  hoped.  Better  still,  she  had  as  much  time  as 
before  for  the  League  work.  She  was  rarely  kept  in 
the  office  after  noon.  It  did  not  occur  to  her  that  she 
might  have  demanded  an  increase  in  salary  on  the 
ground  of  the  free  advertising  she  was  giving  The  Star 
by  her  frequent  speeches. 

She  was  disappointed,  however,  not  to  be  able  to 
establish  more  cordial  relations  with  her  fellow- workers. 


THE  STAR  283 

These  newspaper  people,  men  and  women,  worked 
under  as  great  a  strain  as  any  sweat-shop  girls,  but 
they  seemed  more  foreign  to  her  —  to  her  class  —  than 
the  rich  uptown  women  she  had  met  through  the 
League.  They  had  many  good  qualities  which  she 
appreciated  —  their  esprit  de  corps,  their  hearty,  open 
manners,  the  camaraderie  with  which  they  lent  each 
other  money.  But  they  were  shot  through  with  a 
cynicism  which  shocked  her.  The  whole  situation 
was  typified  in  the  case  of  Maud  Ripley,  a  special 
story  writer,  who  tried  to  "take  her  up." 

She  was  a  tired-eyed,  meagre  woman  of  near  forty. 
She  was  brilliant.  Every  one  in  the  office  referred  to 
her  for  facts  and  figures  instead  of  going  to  the  en 
cyclopaedia.  Some  of  the  things  she  wrote  appealed 
strongly  to  Yetta,  others  were  utterly  futile.  Besides 
her  signed  articles,  mostly  interviews  with  prominent 
foreigners,  —  she  was  fluent  in  half  a  dozen  modern 
languages,  —  she  composed  "The  Meditations  of  a 
Marriageable  Maid."  She  was  rather  proud  of  this 
cheap  wit. 

She  seemed  to  like  Yetta,  but  always  introduced 
her  as  "The  Star's  new  sob-squeezer."  Apparently 
she  saw  nothing  in  the  new  recruit  but  a  successful 
pathos  writer  —  a  rising  star  in  the  profitable  business 
of  starting  tears. 

This  attitude,  which  Yetta  encountered  on  all  sides, 
hurt  her.  She  read  some  of  "Lilian  Leberwurtz'" 
writings.  She  had  discovered  that  the  real  name  of 
this  woman  with  whom  she  was  expected  to  compete 
was  Mrs.  Treadway.  It  was  hopeless  slush ;  it  sickened 
her.  She  tried  vainly  to  picture  the  type  of  woman 
who  could  write  such  drivel  seriously. 


284  COMRADE  YETTA 

"Dine  with  me  Sunday,"  Miss  Ripley  asked  her 
one  day.  She  always  talked  in  the  close-packed  style 
of  a  foreign  correspondent  who  telegraphs  at  a  dollar 
a  word.  "My  flat.  People  you  ought  to  know." 

Yetta  was  essentially  inclusive,  she  did  not  like  to 
turn  her  back  on  any  proffered  friendship.  So  at 
one  the  next  Sunday  she  rang  the  bell  of  the  uptown 
flat  where  Maud  lived  alone.  There  was  one  woman 
and  three  men  in  the  parlor. 

"Who  are  they/'  Yetta  whispered  as  she  was  brush 
ing  her  hair  in  Maud's  bedroom. 

"Matthews  writes  'best  sellers'  —  doesn't  expect  his 
friends  to  read  them.  Conklin  has  money  —  afford 
to  write  high-brow  books  that  don't  sell.  Have  to 
read  between  the  lines.  I'm  too  busy.  Potter's  a 
decadent  poet.  A  bore,  but  all  the  rage.  Mrs.  Tread- 
way  —  Lilian  Leberwurtz  —  motherly  old  soul.  Never 
know  to  look  at  her  that  she's  the  best-paid  woman  in 
the  game  —  come  on." 

Of  course  Yetta  was  most  interested  in  Mrs.  Tread- 
way.  She  would  hardly  have  called  her  motherly, 
although  she  sometimes  referred  to  her  son  in  Harvard 
and  frequently  used  the  phrase  —  "when  you  get  to 
be  my  age." 

She  was  a  large-bosomed,  gaudy  person  with  an 
almost  expressionless  face.  Her  gown  looked  cheap 
in  spite  of  its  evident  expensiveness,  and  her  jewellery 
was  massive.  But  it  was  not  her  appearance  nor  her 
ponderous  condescension  which  troubled  Yetta.  Mrs. 
Treadway  in  her  first  half-dozen  words  showed  herself 
to  be  utterly  sophisticated.  She  did  not  try  to  hide 
the  insincerity  of  her  work  —  she  seemed  to  glory  in 
it.  Her  first  concern  was  to  make  it  apparent  that 


THE  STAR  285 

she  was  not  such  a  fool  as  one  would  judge  from  her 
sentimental  advice. 

Matthews  exuded  prosperity  from  his  lavender  socks 
up  to  his  insistent  tie  —  but  the  brilliancy  did  not 
seem  to  go  higher.  Conklin  was  apologetic  in  com 
parison.  His  face  was  spare,  and  when  he  was  amused, 
deep  curved  wrinkles  formed  on  either  side  of  his 
mouth  like  brackets.  The  parenthetical  effect  of  his 
smile  was  heightened  by  the  fact  that  the  rest  of 
his  face  remained  sombre.  The  poet  looked  his  part. 

When  Yetta  arrived,  they  were  all  looking  at  the  lat 
est  number  of  La  vie  parisienne.  Mrs.  Tread  way  was 
shaking  —  like  a  gelatine  pudding  —  over  the  predica 
ment  in  which  one  of  Fabriano's  naked  women  was 
portrayed.  Potter  began  a  ponderous  argument  on 
the  humor  of  Audrey  Beardsley's  lines  and  the  wit  of 
Matisse's  color.  He  pronounced  Fabriano  "too  obvi 
ous."  He  was  happily  interrupted  by  the  announce 
ment  of  dinner. 

The  conversation  rambled  on  through  the  meal. 
No  one  stuck  to  a  subject  after  their  epigrams  had  run 
out.  Nobody  was  deeply  interested  in  anything. 
Much  of  it  dealt  with  things  about  which  Yetta  was 
proud  of  her  ignorance. 

The  dinner  was  almost  a  disaster  to  her.  "Of 
course/'  she  told  herself  as  she  walked  home,  "this 
group  is  not  typical.  There  are  people,  there  must  be 
people,  who  take  their  writing  seriously."  But  the 
attitude  of  Maud  Ripley  and  her  friends  had  shocked 
Yetta  deeply.  The  worst  of  it  was  that  they  respected 
her  in  a  way  —  because  she  was  "making  good." 
But  the  fact  that  she  was  in  earnest  did  not  interest 
them.  She  would  not  have  dropped  the  least  in  their 


286  COMRADE  YETTA 

esteem  if  she  had  been  utterly  insincere.     She  felt  as 
if  she  had  been  insulted. 

The  next  day  a  new  incident  increased  Yetta's  feeling 
of  foreignness  in  the  office.  She  was  waiting  in  the 
reporters'  room  for  a  chance  to  see  Brace.  Cowan,  the 
gray-haired  sporting  editor,  was  telling  whimsical 
stories  of  the  "old  days"  when  he  had  been  a  cub. 
Although  older  in  years  than  the  others,  he  was  the 
youngest-hearted  of  them  all.  Yetta  felt  more  drawn 
to  him  than  to  any  one  else  on  The  Star. 

Suddenly  a  curly-haired  Irishman,  O'Rourke,  burst 
in.  He  always  entered  a  room  with  a  deafening  bang. 

"Gee,"  he  said  —  "some  story  this  morning.  A 
greenhorn  bank-examiner,  who  didn't  know  his  ABC, 
dropped  into  Ex-Governor  Billings'  bank  yesterday 
and  found  a  pretty  mess.  The  old  boy  never  had  a 
bank-examiner  come  in  unexpectedly  like  that  before 
in  his  long  and  useful  life.  It  nearly  gave  him  apoplexy. 
And  he  just  putting  up  his  name  for  the  Senate.  But 
this  blundering  bank-examiner  was  not  such  a  fool 
after  all.  The  story  goes  that  Billings  had  to  come 
across  with  an  awful  wad  to  hush  him  up." 

"Why?  Did  the  examiner  find  something  wrong  ?" 
Yetta  asked. 

"Yes,  my  child,"  O'Rourke  said  with  playful  pity. 
"He  was  that  foolish." 

"What  did  he  find?"  Yetta  persisted. 

"Unsecured  loans.  Billings  had  been  lending  himself 
the  depositors'  money,  using  his  calling  card  as  collat 
eral." 

"What'll  happen  to  Billings?" 

"It's  a  shame  for  you  to  go  around  town  without  a 
nurse,"  O'Rourke  teased  her.  "It  was  decided  a  long 


THE  STAR  287 

time  ago  that  Billings  was  to  be  the  next  United  States 
Senator  from  the  glorious  State  of  New  York.  A  little 
accident  like  this  can't  be  allowed  to  interfere." 

"It's  a  rotten  shame,"  Cowan  said.  He  was  old 
enough  not  to  have  to  try  to  appear  blase.  "  They  're 
going  too  strong  —  putting  over  a  crook  like  that  on 
the  people.  Everybody  with  any  memory  knows  his 
record.  In  the  good  old  days  when  yellow  journalism 
was  just  beginning,  before  we  got  so  respectable  we 
couldn't  print  the  truth,  we  showed  Billings  up  — 
how  he  came  through  for  the  railroads  on  that  Death 
Avenue  grade  crossing." 

"Oh,  that's  ancient  history.  It's  only  six  months 
ago — "  another  reporter  began.  One  after  another 
they  added  details  to  the  Ex-Governor's  record  of 
infamy.  But  that  afternoon's  paper  contained  a  eulo 
gistic  article  on  his  patriotic  achievement.  An  edi 
torial  which  Yetta  knew  O'Rourke  had  written  praised 
him  to  the  skies,  and  said  the  people  of  the  State  were 
to  be  congratulated  that  so  worthy  a  man  had  consented 
to  accept  the  nomination.  Yetta  could  not  understand 
the  psychology  of  these  men  who,  having  in  hand  the 
evidence  to  defeat  an  unworthy  candidate  for  public 
office,  did  not  use  it.  This  was  worse  than  cynicism  — 
it  was  shameful. 

As  she  was  leaving  the  office  a  few  days  later,  Cowan 
rode  down  in  the  elevator  with  her. 

"If  you  don't  mind,  Miss  Ray ef sky,"  he  said,  when 
they  had  dodged  the  cars  and  had  safely  reached  City 
Hall  Park,  "I'd  like  to  give  you  a  little  advice.  Perhaps 
I'm  butting  in  where  I'm  not  wanted.  But  you  see, 
my  youngest  daughter  is  older  than  you  are.  And  I 
guess  breaking  into  a  new  job  and  a  new  crowd  isn't 


288  COMRADE  YETTA 

the  easiest  thing  in  the  world  for  a  girl.  I  won't  mind 
if  you  do  snub  me." 

" Let's  sit  down  a  minute,"  Yetta  said.  "I'd  like 
to  talk  to  you.  I  certainly  do  feel  lost." 

"Well — "  He  was  evidently  embarrassed.  He 
seemed  to  give  up  hope  of  being  tactful  and  dove  into 
his  subject.  "I  overheard  one  of  the  men  say  that 
you'd  been  to  a  dinner  at  Maud  Ripley's.  She's  a 
clever  woman.  But  I'd  not  like  to  see  one  of  my 
daughters  tie  up  with  her." 

"I  didn't  enjoy  myself/'  Yetta  said.  "I'm  not  go 
ing  again." 

"Good.  That's  all  I  had  to  say.  She  probably 
wouldn't  do  you  any  harm  —  certainly  wouldn't  try  to. 
But  newspaper  men  don't  think  much  of  her  —  except 
her  brain.  Excuse  me  for  butting  in." 

He  started  to  get  up,  but  Yetta  detained  him.  She 
was  very  deeply  touched  by  his  kindly  interest  in  her. 

"There  are  a  lot  of  things  I  would  like  to  ask  you, 
if  you've  the  time." 

She  began  on  the  affair  of  the  Ex-Governor.  Why 
did  not  Cowan  and  O'Rourke  and  the  others  use  their 
knowledge  against  him?  The  answer  to  that  was 
simple.  They  would  lose  their  jobs.  Karner  and  Bill 
ings  were  friends.  But  this  did  not  satisfy  Yetta. 
They  argued  it  out  for  half  an  hour.  Nobody  saw  the 
defects  and  limitations  of  journalism  more  clearly  than 
Cowan,  and  yet  he  was  utterly  loyal. 

"If  my  son  doesn't  turn  out  a  newspaper  man,  I'll 
disown  him,"  he  said  emphatically.  "Now  don't  you 
go  and  get  sore  on  newspaper  work  because  it  isn't  all 
honest.  It's  one  whole  lot  better  than  when  I  began. 
The  Press  is  the  hope  of  Democracy,  and  it  is  also  its 


THE  STAR  289 

measure.  Of  course  Karner's  ethics  are  a  bit  queer. 
But  no  crookeder  than  the  people  will  stand  for. 
He'd  be  honest  if  it  paid. 

"The  people  can  have  just  as  good  and  clean  a  paper 
as  they  really  want.  They  get  better  and  more  demo 
cratic  ones  to-day  than  they  did  twenty  years  ago, 
and  when  they  want  one  that  is  really  straight,  they'll 
get  that. 

"Of  course  it's  bad  if  you  want  to  look  at  it  that 
way.  It's  a  compromise  game.  But  there  isn't  any 
class  of  people  in  the  country  who  are  doing  more  for 
progress  than  this  bunch  of  cynical  newspaper  men. 
They  are  the  real  patriots.  Every  new  recruit  pushes 
the  flag  a  little  farther  forward.  But  you've  got  to 
make  up  your  mind  to  compromise." 

"I  haven't  had  to  do  it  yet,"  Yetta  said. 

"Perhaps  not  yet.  But  sooner  or  later  you  will 
have  to,  if  you're  going  to  play  the  newspaper  game." 

"That's  the  trouble  with  you  people,"  Yetta  ex 
claimed,  as  if  she  suddenly  saw  a  light,  "you  call  it  a 
game.  I'm  not  playing  with  life.  I've  got  to  consider 
myself  and  my  work  serious.  I  won't  compromise. 
If  it's  the  rule  of  the  game  —  why,  I'll  quit  playing 
it." 

The  surprising  thing  was  that  she  was  not  asked  to 
compromise.  Mr.  Brace  seemed  to  take  very  little  in 
terest  in  what  she  wrote.  When  he  spoke  to  her  about 
it,  it  was  to  make  some  technical  suggestion  about  the 
use  of  "caps"  or  "italics."  No  party  Socialist  could 
have  accused  her  contributions  of  lack  of  orthodoxy. 
She  was  giving  her  readers  the  straight  gospel.  Day 
after  day  Isadore  read  them  and  wondered. 

Mrs.  Karner  also  wondered.     Coming  home  late  one 


290  COMRADE  YETTA 

night,  she  encountered  her  husband  in  the  hallway; 
he  had  just  shown  out  some  friends  who  had  been  play 
ing  poker.  She  swept  by  him  with  a  curt  "  Good  night . ' ' 
He  was  a  little  drunk.  But  she  stopped  halfway  up 
the  stairs. 

"I  say,  Bert.  Explain  to  me  the  mystery  of  Yetta 
Rayefsky.  Her  column  this  afternoon  is  straight 
Socialism.  What  does  it  mean?  Has  a  ray  of  light 
penetrated  into  the  subterranean  gloom  of  your  office  ? 
Has  the  editorial  staff  fallen  in  love  with  her?" 

Karner  had  been  winning  and  was  in  good  spirits. 

"  That's  so.  I've  forgotten  to  thank  you  for  sug 
gesting  her.  She's  a  gold  mine." 

"Yes.  But  how  can  The  Star  stand  the  tone  of 
decency  she  gives  it  ?" 

"Don't  worry,"  he  winked  profoundly.  "There'll 
be  money  enough  for  your  trip  to  Europe.  A  column 
and  a  half  won't  hurt  us." 

' '  But  why  do  you  let  her  do  it  ?    What's  the  answer  ?  " 

"As  simple  as  A  B  C.  I'm  surprised  you  don't  see  it 
yourself.  The  little  lady's  bugs  on  sweat-shops.  And 
sweat-shops  don't  advertise.  See?  As  long  as  she 
sticks  to  the  East  Side,  she  can  damn  any  one  she 
likes  to.  And  as  for  Socialism  —  the  girls  don't  vote." 

"It  was  stupid  of  me  not  to  understand,"  Mrs. 
Karner  said  as  she  went  on  up  to  her  room.  "Good 
night  —  Cynic." 

She  never  realized  how  much  her  jibes  stung  her  hus 
band. 

"Damn  the  women,"  he  muttered.  "She  married 
me  for  my  money  and  don't  like  the  way  I  earn  it." 

Mr.  Karner  had  loved  his  wife  more  than  anything  — 
except  the  pleasure  of  cutting  a  figure  in  the  world. 


THE  STAR  291 

His  paper  made  him  a  power  in  the  community.  Presi 
dential  candidates  bid  for  his  support.  No  one  had 
dared  to  blackball  him  when  he  had  recently  put  up 
his  name  at  a  club  which  was  supposed  to  be  composed 
of  gentlemen.  But  his  wife  neither  respected  nor 
feared  him.  He  stood  gloomily  in  the  hallway  —  the 
fumes  of  champagne  making  things  oscillate  gently  — 
wondering  whether  he  dared  to  go  to  her  room.  He 
decided  he  was  afraid,  and,  calling  for  his  hat  and  coat, 
went  out. 

But  to  the  other  people  who  were  asking  the  same 
question  which  Mrs.  Karner  had  put  to  her  husband, 
no  answer  was  given.  Isadore's  daily  amazement  at 
Yetta's  outspoken  Socialism  gradually  grew  into  a 
conviction  that  he  had  been  wrong.  He  wrote  her 
a  loyal  letter  of  apology,  and  Yetta  in  a  condescending 
reply  forgave  him. 

But  trouble  came  as  Christmas  was  approaching. 
Some  ladies  from  the  Woman's  Consumers'  League 
called  on  Yetta,  and,  after  praising  her  work  for  factory 
women,  tried  to  enlist  her  aid  in  the  cause  of  the  de 
partment-store  girls,  who  are  so  shamefully  overworked 
in  the  season  of  holiday  shopping.  They  wanted  her 
to  speak  at  a  mass  meeting.  It  was  not  hard  to  inter 
est  Yetta  in  such  a  cause. 

"Give  me  some  of  the  facts,"  she  said,  after  she  had 
promised  to  speak,  "and  I'll  run  some  stories  about  it 
in  The  Star." 

But  her  first  department-store  article  did  not  come 
out.  It  had  been  "killed"  in  favor  of  a  receipt  for 
preserving  the  gloss  on  finger-nails.  A  copy-reader, 
being  wise  in  newspaper  business  and  anxious  to  gain 
favor,  had  run  to  the  advertising  manager  with  the 


292  COMRADE  YETTA 

proof.  The  advertising  manager  had  rushed  angrily 
to  Mr.  Brace.  Brace  had  gone  to  Mr.  Karner.  Mr. 
Karner  had  thrown  it  into  the  wastepaper  basket  and 
suggested  the  finger-nail  story. 

When  Yetta  called  up  Mr.  Brace  about  it,  she  found 
him  inclined  to  treat  the  matter  as  a  joke.  " After 
all,"  he  laughed,  "you  know  there  are  limits.  You 
can't  take  a  man's  money  for  advertisement  on  one 
page  and  spit  in  his  eye  on  another.  There  is  plenty 
of  work  for  your  scalping  knife  among  people  who 
don't  advertise." 

Yetta  began  to  understand.  It  was  her  first  intro 
duction  to  serious  temptation.  In  six  months  news 
paper  work  had  got  into  her  blood.  Besides  the  pleas 
ant  thrill  of  it,  there  was  the  usefulness.  There  were 
hundreds  of  girls  who  depended  on  her  largely.  It  was 
hard  to  give  up  such  an  audience.  And  it  was  pleasant 
work  —  well-paid.  It  was  a  wonderful  thing  for  a 
sweat-shop  girl  to  have  climbed  so  high.  Should  she 
go  on  "playing  the  game"?  For  a  while  she  tried 
to  shift  the  responsibility  to  other  shoulders.  What 
would  people  think?  She  knew  what  Mabel  and 
Isadore  would  think.  Mabel  would  tell  her  to  com 
promise.  Isadore  the  opposite.  What  would  Walter 
think  ?  And  then  it  suddenly  came  to  her  clearly  that 
it  didn't  matter  at  all  what  anybody  else  thought. 
She  had  to  decide  it  by  herself.  Whatever  happened, 
she  would  always  have  to  live  with  herself.  Self- 
respect  was  more  important  than  the  regard  of  even  the 
closest  friend.  They  were  asking  her  to  do  just  what 
she  had  emphatically  told  Cowan  she  would  never  do. 
She  put  on  her  hat  and  went  to  Mr.  Karner's  office. 

"This  matter  does  not  concern  me,"  he  said.     "I 


THE  STAR  293 

employ  Mr.  Brace  to  edit  the  magazine  page,  and  I 
trust  his  ability  and  judgment.  If  he  considered  it 
unwise  to  run  your  article,  that  ends  it." 

"Mr.  Karner,  if  The  Star  is  afraid  to  touch  depart 
ment  stores,  I'll  resign." 

He  spun  round  in  his  chair. 

"  Afraid  ?     That's  strong  language." 

"It's  very  easy  to  prove  it  unjustified,"  she  said 
quickly. 

He  looked  at  her  sternly  for  a  few  minutes,  taking  her 
measure.  It  was  his  ability  at  this  process  which  had 
enabled  him  to  build  up  his  paper  from  a  third-rater 
to  its  present  position. 

"Miss  Rayefsky,  you  want  a  flat  answer.  We're 
in  business  to  make  money.  We  won't  attack  our 
heaviest  advertisers." 

Yetta  got  up. 

"Don't  be  in  a  hurry.  Nobody  gets  a  chance  to  re 
sign  from  my  staff  twice.  Think  this  over  for  a  couple 
of  days.  We've  been  satisfied  with  your  work ;  I  hoped 
you  were.  I  hoped  that  you  thought  what  you  were 
doing  was  worth  while.  You  can  go  on  doing  it  indefi 
nitely  as  far  as  I  can  see.  You're  about  to  throw  up 
this  work  because  you  can't  do  the  impossible.  It  isn't 
just  The  Star.  It's  a  limitation  of  journalism.  No 
editor  in  the  city  could  print  that  story." 

"Within  twenty-four  hours  I'll  mail  it  to  you  in 
print,"  Yetta  said,  moving  towards  the  door. 

"So!"  he  growled.  "That's  it,  is  it?  Somebody 
else  has  offered  you  a  better  contract.  You  forget,  of 
course,  that  we  taught  you  how  to  write  —  that  we 
advertised  you  —  made  you.  You  forget  all  that  as 
soon  as  somebody  else  offers  you  —  " 


294  COMRADE  YETTA 

But  Yetta  had  slammed  the  door  in  his  face. 

Back  in  her  room,  she  called  up  Isadore  and  told 
him  the  story. 

"I'm  mailing  you  the  article  to  print  in  The  Clarion.19 

So  she  made  the  honorable  amend. 

"I  was  half  wrong,  anyhow,"  he  tried  to  comfort  her. 
"I  never  would  have  believed  they'd  let  you  free  as 
long  as  they  did.  And  besides  —  you've  learned  to 
write.  I  hope  you'll  give  us  some  more." 

What  hurt  Yetta  most  was  that  a  cable  had  come 
from  Teheran  saying  that  Walter  had  started  home 
ward.  He  would  hear  of  the  mess  she  had  made. 

Mr.  Karner,  when  he  received  the  Socialist  paper, 
with  Yetta's  article  in  it,  vented  some  of  his  profane 
rage  on  his  wife.  The  quarrel  which  resulted  brought 
Mrs.  Karner  to  life. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

WALTER'S  RETURN 

WHEN  the  Archaeological  Expedition  reached  Con 
stantinople,  the  married  men  were  met  by  their  wives. 

To  the  suburbanite  who  comes  home  after  each 
day's  work,  the  dinner  is  likely  to  seem  as  important 
as  his  spouse.  The  waiting  wife  has  a  deeper  sig 
nificance  for  the  sailor  and  explorer.  For  three  years 
these  men  had  seen  no  white  women,  except  in  a  Scotch 
Mission  compound,  four  days'  ride  from  their  camp. 

The  Marquise  d'Hauteville  was  much  younger  than 
her  husband.  She  was  a  daintily  gowned  Parisienne 
of  the  Quartier  St.  Germain.  She  was  on  the  dock  with 
her  two  boys,  seven  and  four.  The  sight  of  her  ex 
plained  to  Walter  the  nervous  impatience  which  had 
kept  the  Chief  pacing  the  deck  restlessly  ever  since 
they  had  left  Batoum. 

Dr.  Bertholet,  the  querulous  specialist  in  measuring 
skulls,  suddenly  began  to  smile  when  he  caught  sight  of 
Madame  —  a  fat  bourgeoise  in  black  silk,  who  looked 
like  la  patronne  of  a  cafe.  Beckmeyer,  the  German 
authority  on  the  ancient  religions  of  Persia,  waved 
his  handkerchief  wildly  to  a  flaxen-haired  Gretchen. 
They  had  lost  a  son  while  he  was  away,  and  when  the 

295 


296  COMRADE  YETTA 

gang  plank  was  down,  they  rushed  into  each  other's 
arms  and  sobbed  like  children. 

The  unmarried  men  stood  on  one  foot  and  then 
on  the  other  until  the  first  transports  had  quieted  and 
were  then  presented  to  the  ladies.  The  Marquis  gave 
them  a  rendezvous  in  Paris  for  the  next  week.  It  was 
understood  that  the  married  men  were  to  have  a  few 
days  with  their  families  before  the  expedition  should 
formally  report  its  return. 

Delanoue,  Vibert,  and  Walter  rushed  their  baggage 
through  the  customs  and  had  just  time  to  catch  the 
Orient  Express.  All  three  of  them  were  in  a  hurry  to 
reach  Paris.  The  two  Frenchmen  were  like  bathers  on 
a  spring-board  about  to  dive  into  the  sea.  They  let 
their  imaginations  run  riot,  trying  to  devise  a  suit 
able  orgy  to  recompense  them  for  their  three  years  of 
deprivation.  Delanoue  wished  them  both  to  be  his 
guests.  He  proposed  to  lead  them  to  his  favorite 
restaurant  and  order  everything  on  the  bill  of  fare. 
Afterwards  they  would  invade  Montmartre.  Unless 
Paris  had  seriously  deteriorated,  he  felt  sure  he  could 
make  them  realize  how  sad  and  colorless  were  the  wild 
est  dreams  of  the  Arabian  Nights. 

Vibert  gleefully  accepted  the  invitation.  But  Walter 
quietly  refused.  He  also  was  in  a  hurry  to  reach 
Paris  —  he  hoped  to  find  a  letter  from  Mabel.  When 
the  train  reached  the  Gare  de  VEst,  in  spite  of  their  jibes 
at  his  Puritanism,  he  left  them. 

At  the  Consulate  he  found  three  packages  of  mail. 
He  hurried  to  a  hotel  and  opened  them  eagerly.  There 
was  only  one  letter  from  Mabel,  hardly  more  than  a  note. 
Yetta,  she  wrote,  had  told  her  that  he  had  started 
homeward.  She  hoped  the  Expedition  had  been  sue- 


WALTER'S  RETURN  297 

cessful.     She  would  be  glad  to  see  him  again.     She  was, 
as  usual,  very  busy,  but  both  she  and  Eleanor  were  well. 

What  a  fool  he  had  been  made  by  hope  !  He  had  not 
been  able  to  accept  her  definite  refusals  —  he  remem 
bered  them  all  now.  These  three  years  he  had  shut 
his  eyes  to  reality  and  had  lived  in-  a  baseless  hope. 
A  man  needs  something  more  than  routine  work  to 
keep  him  going.  In  all  the  idle  moments  scattered 
through  his  busy,  exciting  life  —  the  minutes  before 
he  fell  asleep,  the  times  some  jackal's  cry  had  waked 
him  in  the  night,  all  the  intervals  of  waiting  —  he  had 
thought  of  Mabel.  And  always  he  had  asked  himself 
if  their  long  intimacy  was  to  lead  to  nothingness.  It 
seemed  impossible.  Surely  she  would  feel  his  absence, 
miss  him  from  her  life  and  want  him  back.  His  friend 
ship  must  have  meant  something  to  her.  She  was 
proud  and  hard  to  change.  But  time  would  work  the 
miracle.  She  would  call  to  him.  It  seemed  to  be 
written  in  the  stars,  in  the  glory  of  the  desert  dawns,  in 
the  haunting  afterglows  of  the  sunset. 

The  last  months  this  dream  had  been  more  concrete 
than  any  reality.  When  he  reached  Paris  after  his 
long  exile,  he  would  find  her  summons.  Perhaps  she 
would  come  there  to  meet  him.  There  was  only  this 
cold  and  formal  note. 

In  his  barren  hotel  room  he  sounded  the  very  depths 
of  loneliness.  Of  all  his  recent  comrades  he  alone  was 
unwelcomed.  He  thought  of  the  dainty  Marquise 
d'Hauteville  and  her  children.  They  had  stopped  off 
at  Semmering  in  the  Austrian  Alps.  He  did  not  know 
where  the  Bertholets  were  celebrating  their  reunion. 
Beckmeyer  and  his  Gretchen  had  gone  up  to  their 
village  home  on  the  edge  of  the  Black  Forest.  And 


298  COMRADE  YETTA 

somewhere  on  the  side  of  La  Butte  joyeuse,  Delanoue 
and  Vibert  were  finding  companionship  and  a  hearty 
welcome.  Here  he  was  in  his  dismal  hotel  room,  alone 
with  the  Dead  Hope  he  could  not  forget,  a  misfit,  a 
mistake  —  une  vie  manquee. 

The  winter  night  fell  over  Paris,  but  he  was  too 
gloomy  to  notice  the  darkness.  It  was  the  cold  which 
at  last  stung  into  his  consciousness.  He  went  to  bed 
like  a  man  who  had  been  drugged. 

The  next  morning  he  was  awakened  by  a  batch  of 
reporters.  Somehow  the  news  that  the  Expedition  had 
returned  had  leaked  out.  The  reporters  had  heard 
some  vague  rumors  of  "the  siege"  when  for  two  weeks 
the  fanatics  had  attacked  the  camp,  and  how  Walter, 
dressed  in  native  clothes,  had  slipped  through  the  lines 
and  brought  relief.  But  he  refused  to  talk,  taking 
refuge  behind  the  etiquette  which  requires  subordinates 
to  hold  their  peace  until  the  chief  has  spoken. 

He  had  hardly  got  rid  of  the  reporters,  when  Delanoue 
and  Vibert  broke  in  with  an  incoherent  account  of 
their  adventures.  They  were  both  drunk  and  decid 
edly  tired.  While  Walter  was  shaving,  Delanoue  fell 
asleep  on  his  bed,  Vibert  on  his  lounge.  And  they  were 
not  quiet  about  it. 

The  coffee  went  cold  in  Walter's  cup.  What  should 
he  do  ?  It  was  impossible  to  spend  the  morning  listen 
ing  to  uneasy  grunts  and  snores.  Where  should  he  go  ? 
On  previous  visits  to  Paris  he  had  enjoyed  himself. 
He  knew  many  people.  But  he  did  not  feel  that  they 
would  amuse  him  this  time.  Anyhow  it  was  too  early 
to  make  calls.  His  coffee  was  hopelessly  cold.  He  was 
trying  to  overcome  his  listlessness  and  ring  for  more, 
when  the  chasseur  brought  him  a  petit  bleu$  and  the 


WALTER'S  RETURN  299 

announcement  that  a  new  swarm  of  reporters  wanted 
to  see  him. 

" Hello,  hello,  Mr.  Walter  Longman,"  the  pneuma- 
tique  ran.  ' i  The  morning  papers  announce  your  advent. 
Come  around  for  dejeuner.  By  all  means  come.  I'll 
lock  the  door.  I  warrant  the  newspaper  men  are 
hounding  you.  If  you  are  one  half  as  agreeable  as  you 
used  to  be,  you'll  rescue  from  the  very  bottom  of 
boredom  an  unfortunate  woman  who  signs  herself 
Your  friend 

BEATRICE  MAYNARD  KARNER." 

Walter  had  hardly  thought  of  Mrs.  Karner  since 
leaving  America.  But  five  minutes  after  he  had  torn 
open  the  despatch,  he  had  dodged  the  reporters  and  was 
out  on  the  sidewalk.  It  was  his  intention  to  call  a 
taxi  and  go  at  once  to  Mrs.  Karner's,  but  he  realized 
abruptly  that  it  was  much  too  early.  He  had  an  hour 
and  a  half  to  kill  before  time  for  dejeuner.  He  sat 
down  in  one  of  the  Boulevard  Cafes  and  tried  to  interest 
himself  in  the  papers.  But  once  more  the  ugly  mood 
came  to  him.  He  let  his  coffee  grow  cold  again.  He 
sat  there  glowering  at  an  indefinite  spot  on  the  polished 
floor  —  wondering  dully  if  there  was  any  further  inter 
est  left  for  him  in  life.  He  felt  so  unsocial  that  he 
gave  up  the  idea  of  going  to  Mrs.  Karner's.  He  would 
be  bored.  But  as  lunch  time  approached  he  became 
disturbed  at  the  idea  of  eating  alone.  Certainly 
anybody's  company  would  be  better  than  his  own. 

Mrs.  Karner  welcomed  him  gayly.  She  seemed  bent 
on  being  merry.  There  was  a  subtle  change  in  her 
manner  of  dressing.  She  was  less  of  a  grande  dame  than 
she  had  been  in  New  York.  She  was  feeling  her  way 


300  COMRADE  YETTA 

back  to  her  youth.  There  was  a  dash  of  reckless  un 
certainty  in  her  manner  as  of  a  boy  at  the  beginning  of 
his  vacation  or  a  convict  just  released. 

"How  I  envy  you  all  the  excitement  you've  been 
having  !  Tell  me  about  it." 

He  had  just  started  to  reply  when  dejeuner  was 
announced  and  they  went  out  to  the  dining-room.  He 
hardly  remembered  what  they  talked  about  —  details 
of  the  Expedition  mostly.  But  when  the  meal  was 
ended  and  they  went  back  to  the  salon,  Mrs.  Karner 
stretched  out  on  a  chaise  longue  and  he  sat  down  on  the 
ottoman  by  the  open  fire.  A  constraint  fell  on  them. 
For  lack  of  a  better  remark  he  said  — 

"I've  a  pocket  full  of  choice  Caucasian  cigarettes. 
Won't  you  try  one?" 

She  accepted  his  suggestion,  but  he  could  think  of 
nothing  further  to  say. 

"You're  not  exactly  cheerful  to-day,"  she  said. 
"Anything  wrong  ? " 

He  made  a  vague  gesture. 

"Bad  news  from  home?" 

"Home?"  He  tried  to  make  his  tone  flippant. 
"Is  there  any  such  place?" 

"Fine!"  she  said.  "You're  coming  on,  Walter. 
Your  worst  fault  used  to  be  your  belief  in  such  super 
stitions." 

It  was  her  turn  now  to  hide  her  seriousness  behind 
the  mask  of  flippancy. 

"Do  you  notice  anything  particular  about  the  furni 
ture  in  this  room  ?" 

"It's  fine  old  Empire." 

"Well,  it  doesn't  matter  whether  it's  Empire,  or 
Louis  Seize,  or  Henri  Quatre,  or  Chinois.  It  isn't 


WALTER'S  RETURN  301 

Gothic  !  That's  the  important  point.  Yes,"  she  went 
on  in  answer  to  the  question  in  his  eyes,  "I'm  expecting 
the  final  papers  any  day.  I'll  take  my  maiden  name. 
Beatrice  Maynard." 

She  threw  back  her  head  and  blew  out  some  rings  of 
the  fragrant  smoke. 

"It  took  me  a  long  time  to  learn  this  trick,"  she  said, 
as  if  it  were  a  very  serious  matter.  "The  man  who 
kept  the  Morgue  on  The  Star  taught  me  —  in  the 
old  days." 

But  Walter  hardly  heard  her  irrelevant  words.  He 
was  thinking  of  the  implications  of  her  smash-up,  and 
overlaid  on  these  thoughts  was  the  impression  that  her 
throat  was  very  beautiful.  He  had  never  noticed  it 
before. 

"Fine  cigarettes,  these,"  she  commented,  still  watch 
ing  the  smoke  rings  to  avoid  meeting  his  eyes. 

But  Walter  did  not  reply.  A  sudden  pity  for  her 
flooded  him.  How  hopelessly  lost  they  both  were, 
splashing  about  aimlessly  in  the  great  muddle  of  life. 
They  sat  silent  for  many  minutes,  staring  blankly  at 
the  dead  past  and  the  future  which  promised  to  be  still 
born. 

It  is  strange  how  much  we  sometimes  know  of  other 
people  which  has  never  been  told.  Mrs.  Karner, 
although  Walter  had  never  taken  her  into  his  con 
fidence,  knew  with  amazing  clearness  the  import  of  his 
barren  romance.  And  he,  in  the  same  way,  sensed 
what  was  wrong  with  her,  felt  the  deadening  tragedy 
which  lay  behind  her  mocking  words. 

She  —  frightened  by  the  feeling  that  in  this  poignant 
silence  they  were  becoming  dangerously  intimate  — 
brought  their  reveries  to  an  abrupt  end  by  jumping  up. 


302  COMRADE  YETTA 

" We're  a  sorry  couple,  aren't  we?  We've  messed 
things  up  frightfully,  and  we  want  to  cry.  It's  much 
better  business  to  laugh.  Let's  shake  hands  and  cheer 
up." 

The  wide  sleeve  of  her  morning  gown  fell  back  from 
her  arm  as  she  stretched  out  her  hand  to  him.  Her 
skin  seemed  inordinately,  preposterously  white  to  him 
as  he  stood  up.  But  the  thing  which  impressed  him 
most  was  the  intricate  network  of  tiny  blue  veins  on 
the  inside  by  the  elbow. 

"In  France,"  he  said,  "I  claim  French  privileges." 

As  she  did  not  pull  her  hand  away  when  he  raised  it 
to  his  lips,  he  kissed  the  blue  veins  inside  her  elbow. 
He  did  not  realize  what  he  was  doing  —  what  he  had 
done  —  until  he  heard  the  sharp  intake  of  her  breath. 
The  look  on  her  face  made  the  blood  pound  in  his 
temples. 

It  was  only  a  matter  of  seconds  that  they  were  both 
silent.  But  it  seemed  an  interminable  time. 

Walter  looked  down  into  the  glowing  fireplace  — 
struggling  with  the  thing  which  burned  within  him 
more  hotly  than  the  coals.  After  all  —  why  not  ?  It 
is  horrible  to  be  lonely. 

"You  foolish  boy,"  she  said,  with  an  uneasy  laugh, 
"I  didn't  mean  to  be  taken  so  literally." 

"I  guess  it's  the  only  way  for  us  —  if  we  want  to 
cheer  up." 

He  snapped  his  half-burnt  cigarette  into  the  grate 
and  turned  towards  her.  Her  face  suddenly  went  white, 
and  she  swayed  unsteadily.  One  hand  waved  aim 
lessly  in  the  air,  seeking  support.  He  took  it  in  his. 

The  next  few  days  the  papers  were  full  of  the  Expe- 


WALTER'S  RETURN  303 

dition.  The  Marquis  d'Hauteville  came  back  from 
Semmering,  and  a  large  part  of  his  statement  was  a 
tribute  to  Walter's  ability  and  courage.  The  other 
members  of  the  Expedition,  with  the  delightful  courtesy 
of  the  French,  emphasized  his  part  in  the  Siege  and 
exaggerated  the  perils  he  had  run  while  bringing  them 
relief.  Paris  dearly  loves  such  sensations.  Nothing 
pleases  the  gay  city  more  than  to  idolize  a  foreigner. 
He  did  the  best  he  could  to  escape  the  lionizing. 

There  was  much  work  still  to  do  in  the  preparing 
of  the  report.  He  moved  from  the  hotel  to  a  quiet 
cottage  in  Passy  and  settled  down  to  work  —  and  play. 
Beatrice  scrupulously  respected  his  "duty  hours/'  but 
once  he  was  free  from  his  desk,  he  plunged  with  her  into 
a  swirl  of  gayety,  such  as  he  had  never  before  permitted 
himself.  The  follies  of  the  "  Transatlantique "  set  — 
the  rich  Americans  of  the  Etoile  district  —  interested 
him  from  their  sheer  novelty.  Beatrice's  incisive 
comments  on  the  bogus  aristocracy  —  the  Roumanian 
Grand  Dukes  and  Princes  of  the  Papal  States  —  who 
fattened  off  the  gullibility  of  his  countrymen  amused 
him  immensely. 

Their  intimacy  was  strange  indeed.  Before  his  in 
fatuation  with  Mabel,  Walter  had  not  been  exactly  a 
Puritan,  but  he  had  never  experienced  anything  like 
this.  No  word  of  love  ever  passed  between  him  and 
Beatrice.  The  hallowed  phrases  of  affection  were  un 
der  the  ban.  They  were  feverishly  engaged  in  trying 
to  forget,  in  helping  each  other  forget  how  hollow  such 
words  had  proved.  A  feeling  of  delicacy  restrained 
him  from  using  the  word  "home,"  it  had  been  such  a 
mockery  to  her.  And  to  have  spoken  to  him  of  fidelity 
would  have  seemed  to  her  rank  cruelty. 


304  COMRADE  YETTA 

Only  once  did  they  talk  together  of  the  past.  What 
he  had  to  tell  was  told  quickly.  Her  story  was  longer, 
and  part  of  it  she  did  not  tell. 

Her  father  had  been  a  doctor.  His  death,  when 
she  was  in  college,  had  left  her  almost  penniless,  alone 
with  an  invalid  mother.  Literature  had  always  been 
her  ambition ;  so,  leaving  college,  she  had  come  to  New 
York  to  try  newspaper  work.  She  had  fought  her 
way  to  a  very  moderate  success.  It  was  not  the  kind 
of  work  which  interested  her,  —  the  dreariest  kind  of 
pot-boiling,  —  and  it  did  not  pay  enough  to  keep  her 
mother  in  the  comfort  she  was  accustomed  to.  There 
was  no  immediate  prospect  of  bettering  their  position. 
Beatrice  was  very  much  discouraged.  She  thought 
she  had  it  in  her  to  write  novels,  but  by  wearing  herself 
out  with  hack  work  she  could  not  earn  enough  for  her 
mother's  needs  and  had  no  energy  left  for  the  things 
she  longed  to  do. 

Then  Bert  Karner  had  come  along.  He  was  a  young 
millionnaire  from  the  West.  He  bought  The  Star 
on  which  Beatrice  worked.  Although  rich,  he  was  not 
of  proud  family.  He  never  told  how  his  father  had 
made  his  stake.  His  outspoken  ambition  was  "to 
make  New  York  sit  up  and  take  notice.7'  He  had  a 
decided  genius  for  journalism.  And  it  was  not  long  be 
fore  the  steadily  increasing  circulation  of  his  paper  — 
and  his  piratical  methods  —  attracted  attention.  There 
was  no  statute  by  which  he  could  be  sent  to  jail,  so  he 
became  "a  leading  citizen." 

At  the  very  first  he  fell  wildly  and  tumultuously  in 
love  with  Beatrice.  Although  his  passion  for  her  was 
very  real,  it  was  not  entirely  free  from  calculation.  His 
project  of  "being  somebody"  required  a  skilled  manager. 


WALTER'S  RETURN  305 

Beatrice  was  beautiful,  she  knew  how  to  dress.  She 
was  witty,  she  would  make  a  distinguished-looking 
hostess.  He  could  also  rely  on  her  taste  in  selecting 
his  neckties.  He  was  morbidly  afraid  of  appearing 
vulgar,  and  especially  in  this  matter  of  neck-wear  he 
was  afraid  to  trust  his  own  judgment.  These  consid 
erations  made  him  ask  her  to  be  his  wife  instead  of  his 
mistress.  Her  first  refusal  surprised  him.  But  he  was 
used  to  buying  what  he  wanted,  and  he  kept  raising  her 
price. 

If  Mrs.  Maynard  had  complained,  her  daughter 
would  very  likely  have  been  more  egoistic.  But  her 
mother,  whom  she  always  referred  to  as  an  Angel  in 
Heaven,  never  complained.  And  so  at  last  Beatrice 
sold  herself.  But  —  and  this,  for  some  unaccount 
able  reason,  she  did  not  tell  Walter  —  she  had  had  an 
outspoken  explanation  with  Karner.  He  knew  what 
he  was  buying,  knew  that  she  did  not  love  him. 

Three  months  after  the  marriage  Mrs.  Maynard 
died  suddenly.  This  was  what  had  annihilated 
Beatrice.  It  was  so  horribly  grotesque.  If  her  mother 
had  only  died  before  the  wedding !  If  the  gods  had 
only  given  Beatrice  courage  to  hold  out  a  little  longer ! 
To  give  her  mother  these  three  months  of  comfort, 
she  had  sold  all  her  life. 

In  her  first  fit  of  despair  she  had  burned  the  half -fin 
ished  novel.  What  did  a  failure  like  herself  have  to  tell 
the  world  ?  But  her  mother's  death  had  not  been  Bert's 
fault.  So  at  first  she  tried  to  fulfil  her  contract  with  him, 
did  what  she  could  to  organize  his  home  and  help  him 
in  his  social  climbing.  But  the  Fates  had  not  finished 
their  bludgeonings.  Into  this  dumb  indifference  which 
followed  her  mother's  death  came  a  sudden  demon- 


306  COMRADE  YETTA 

stration  of  her  husband's  rascality.  When  she  had 
married  him,  she  had  at  least  thought  he  was  an  up 
right  man.  If  her  spirit  had  not  been  broken,  she  would 
have  left  him  at  once.  But  she  was  too  shattered  to 
care  any  more.  She  had  gone  through  the  forms  of 
life,  seeking  listlessly  after  distraction.  The  thing 
which  had  come  nearest  to  reality  had  been  her  interest 
in  the  Woman's  Trade  Union  League.  She  had  gone 
on  the  Board  because  her  husband  urged  her  to  make 
friends  with  Mrs.  Van  Cleave.  It  held  her  interest 
because  her  own  hunger-years  had  given  her  a  deep 
sympathy. 

Although  she  did  not  realize  it,  it  was  Yetta  who 
had  at  last  driven  her  to  leave  her  husband.  She  had 
caught  some  of  Yetta' s  life-giving  faith.  It  takes  us 
a  long  time  to  recover  when  once  we  are  dead,  and  Mrs. 
Karner  had  been  a  long  time  dead.  She  did  not  know 
what  was  happening,  but  the  grain  of  faith,  which  the 
little  East  Side  vest-maker  had  planted  in  her,  grew 
steadily.  Slowly  it  had  forced  out  roots  into  the  dead 
matter  about  it,  pushed  the  stem  which  was  to  bear 
fruit  up  through  the  hardened  soil  to  the  light.  When 
Mr.  Karner  had  profanely  explained  how  Yetta  had 
left  his  office,  his  wife  suddenly  realized  that  she  was 
alive  again.  The  sham  was  over.  The  next  day  she 
had  called  on  a  lawyer  and  had  left  for  Europe  shortly 
afterwards. 

Walter  and  Beatrice  did  not  have  another  serious 
talk  for  several  months.  He  had  nearly  finished  his 
work,  and  she  at  least  had  begun  to  wonder  what  would 
come  next.  An  early  spring  day  had  tempted  them 
to  motor  down  the  river  to  St.  Cloud.  After  supper, 
Walter  was  contentedly  filling  his  pipe,  his  back  against 


WALTER'S  RETURN  307 

a  great  chestnut  tree,  while  she  was  repacking  the 
dishes  in  the  lunch  basket. 

"If  you  want  any  help,"  he  said  lazily,  "I'll  call  the 
chauffeur.  He's  paid  to  do  such  things." 

She  ignored  his  remark  until  she  had  finished.  Then 
she  came  over  and  sat  beside  him. 

"Walter,"  she  said,  "in  three  weeks  now  I'm  going 
to  leave  Paris  —  for  Switzerland." 

"It  doesn't  begin  to  get  hot  here  till  the  end  of  June." 

"Well,  I'm  not  going  in  search  of  coolness.  Quiet 
is  what  I  want.  I've  got  to  settle  down  to  work  —  a 
novel.  I  must  get  away  from  this  turmoil  of  a  city 
and  its  disturbances." 

"Am  I  one  of  the  disturbances?"  he  asked  after  a 
moment's  thought. 

"Yes." 

"It'll  be  very  lonely  for  me  when  you  go." 

"Let's  have  a  cigarette,"  she  said. 

It  was  not  till  it  had  almost  burnt  out  that  either  of 
them  spoke.  She  broke  the  silence. 

"Yes.  I  will  be  lonely  too.  But  it  looks  to  me  like 
my  only  salvation."  She  stopped  to  press  out  the 
spark  of  her  cigarette  on  the  sole  of  her  slipper.  "I'm 
not  a  success  as  a  light-minded  woman,  Walter.  I'm  no 
good  at  dancing  a  clog.  I  rather  think  you  saved  my  life. 
I've  been  leaning  on  you  more  than  you  have  known, 
I  guess.  I've  caught  my  breath  —  thanks  to  you." 

He  put  out  his  hand  in  protest :  — 

"There's  lots  of  thanking  to  be  done,  but  it's  the 
other  way  round." 

But  she  did  not  seem  to  hear  him.  Her  brow  was 
puckered  up  trying  to  find  words  for  the  thing  she 
wanted  to  say. 


308  COMRADE  YETTA 

"I've  got  to  stand  on  my  own  feet  —  alone.  I 
didn't  want  to  take  any  money  from  Bert.  A  good 
friend  lent  me  some.  Enough  for  a  year  or  two,  but 
I  can't  always  be  dependent." 

"Why  not  lean  on  me  a  little  more  effectively,"  he 
broke  in  impetuously.  "Why  not  go  on  just  as  we  are 

—  at  least  till  you  find  your  footing." 

"No,"  she  shook  her  head  decisively.  "That 
wouldn't  do  at  all.  Look  here,  Walter,  we're  grown  up 

—  we  can  talk  it  out  straight.     What  future  is  there 
for  us  if  we  go  on?     Only  two  alternatives.     We'll 
get   to   hate  each   other  —  or  —  we'll   get   to  —  we'll 
become  a  habit.     Woof  !     Habits  are  hard  to  break. 
No.     If  I'm  really  going  to  live,  I've  got  to  avoid  habits 
as  I  would  leprosy.     There'll  never  be  any  decent  life 
for  me  till  I've  convinced  myself  that  I  can  go  it  alone. 
I've  got  a  whole  lot  of  things  to  fight  out.     My  plan  is 
best.     Three  weeks  more  of  vacation,  three  weeks  more 
of  ribbons  —  and  then  armor." 

"As  you  think  best,"  he  said. 

The  last  day,  he  bought  her  ticket  for  her,  engaged 
her  berth  in  the  morning,  and  then  they  went  out  again 
to  St.  Cloud  to  spend  the  day.  After  lunch  they 
spread  out  a  rug  under  the  great  trees. 

"Boy,"  she  began.  She  was  not  as  old  as  he,  but 
being  a  woman  she  liked  to  pretend  she  was.  "I've 
come  to  a  momentous  conclusion  about  you.  You 
ought  to  be  married." 

He  sat  up  with  a  jerk. 

"Don't  be  frightened,"  she  said.  "I'm  not  a  can 
didate.  I've  had  too  much  of  it  already.  But  seri 
ously  —  you're  different.  I  don't  mean  to  be  insulting, 
but  you  were  made  to  be  a  family  man.  Our  little 


WALTER'S  RETURN  309 

holiday  has  been  pleasant  without  end,  but  it's  not 
what  you  were  meant  for.  After  all  you're  not  too 
old  to  reform.  You've  been  on  the  rocks.  But  there's 
a  good  deal  left  of  the  wreckage.  I  got  into  trouble 
because  I  didn't  have  the  nerve  to  hold  tight  enough 
to  my  dream.  Watch  out  that  you  don't  make  the 
opposite  mistake.  Let  me  diagnose  your  case." 

She  moved  around  in  front  of  him,  and  from  time  to 
time  shook  her  slender  finger  at  him  solemnly. 

"  You've  ability.  Serious  ability  —  the  kind  this 
old  world  of  ours  needs.  And  you've  this  'social  con 
science'  with  which  the  younger  generation  is  cursed. 
You  won't  be  content  to  waste  yourself.  What  are 
you  going  to  do  ?  Somehow  you've  got  to  find  a  place 
where  you'll  seem  to  yourself  useful.  If  not,  you'd 
better  commit  suicide  at  once.  If  you're  going  to 
run  to  waste,  at  least  spare  yourself  the  shameful 
years.  But  no.  You're  not  defeated  enough  for  the 
arsenic  bottle. 

"  You've  two  kinds  of  ability.  You  pretend  to 
despise  this  archaeology  —  but  nobody  else  does.  The 
other  ability  is  your  grasp  of  social  philosophy.  For 
either  career  —  and,  wise  as  I  am,  I'm  not  sure  which 
will  be  better  for  you  —  you  need  a  quiet,  orderly  life, 
not  a  disturbing,  disorderly  romp  like  these  last  months. 
You  need  to  be  well  kept,  you  need  a  wife." 

Walter  smoked  away  quietly,  but  his  face  had  turned 
haggard. 

"I  don't  want  to  hurt  you,"  she  went  on  relentlessly, 
"but  Mabel  Train  isn't  the  only  woman  in  the  world." 

"  She's  the  only  one  I  ever  especially  noticed,  till 
you  came  along." 

"  Leave  me  out  of  this   discussion.     There's   just 


310  COMRADE  YETTA 

the  trouble.  If  you  insist  on  keeping  your  eyes 
closed  to  the  other  women,  you'd  best  run  along  and 
blow  your  fool  head  off  at  once.  If  you  want  a  real 
life,  open  your  eyes." 

"Well,  "he  said  with  a  wry  smile,  "  I  suppose  you've 
got  some  victim  to  recommend.  Whom  shall  I  notice  ?  " 

It  was  several  minutes  before  she  took  up  his  challenge. 

"Why  don't  you  notice  Yetta  Rayefsky  ?" 

"Yetta  Rayefsky?"  he  repeated  in  amazement. 

"Yes.  Why  not  ?  She's  a  fine  girl,  and  she  worships 
the  ground  you  walk  on." 

"You're  joking." 

"Not  at  all.  I  know  what  I'm  talking  about. 
Perhaps  she  doesn't  realize  it  herself,  but  she's  very 
much  in  love  with  you." 

"The  poor  little  girl!" 

"Yes.  Of  course.  You  ought  to  be  sorry  for  her. 
You  don't  deserve  it.  But  when  it  comes  to  that, 
did  any  man  ever  live  who  really  deserved  to  have  a 
woman  love  him?  That's  the  tragedy  of  our  sex. 
We  have  nothing  better  to  love  than  mere  men." 

There  were  no  heroics  over  their  separation.  They 
went  to  town  for  supper.  They  were  both  sufficiently 
civilized  to  keep  up  the  appearance  of  gayety. 

Just  before  the  train  started  she  leaned  out  of  the 
window  of  her  compartment  and  tossed  him  a  final 
challenge. 

"Walter,"  she  said,  "I'm  more  fortunate  than  you. 
I  know  what  I'm  going  to  do  next.  Better  not  waste 
time  deciding.  You  know  what  my  advice  is.  Go 
back  to  New  York  and  get  married." 

But  there  was  no  agreement  in  his  face  as  the  train 
pulled  out. 


WALTER'S  RETURN  311 

The  next  weeks  were  Hell  for  him.  Left  to  himself, 
the  bitter  memories  came  back  with  a  rush.  The 
Quatorze  feuillet  brought  him  the  Legion  of  Honor. 
He  had  often  thought  that  it  was  the  one  distinc 
tion  he  would  enjoy  most.  The  investiture  seemed  a 
farce.  What  good  are  honors,  when  there  is  no  one  at 
whose  feet  to  lay  them?  Then  came  the  offer  of  a 
professorship  at  Oxford.  It  was  a  life  berth,  the  highest 
scholastic  honor  to  which  he  could  aspire.  After  all, 
if  these  people  valued  his  knowledge  of  Haktite  and  no 
one  else  valued  him  at  all,  why  not  accept  ? 

But  he  could  not  bring  himself  to  a  definite  separation 
from  Mabel.  He  decided  to  have  one  more  try.  He 
asked  for  a  month  to  consider  the  Oxford  offer  and 
started  home.  He  announced  his  coming  by  two 
cables  —  to  Mabel  and  to  Yetta. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

THE    PALACE    OF  DREAMS 

WHEN  the  cablegram  from  Teheran  had  announced 
that  Walter  was  starting  homeward,  it  became  neces 
sary  for  Yetta  to  rearrange  her  attitude  towards  him. 
As  long  as  he  had  been  an  abstraction  she  had  been 
perfectly  free  to  love  him  according  to  her  fancy. 
Evidently  she  would  have  to  treat  the  real  person  differ 
ently. 

Of  course  she  was  glad  that  he  was  coming  back, 
but  there  was  an  undercurrent  of  sadness  to  the  thought. 
It  is  very  hard  to  give  up  habits  which  have  become 
dear.  And  she  was  habituated  to  his  absence.  In  a 
more  tangible  way  his  rooms  had  become  dear  to  her. 
In  this  setting  she  had  come  into  life.  Almost  every 
memory  she  valued,  except  those  of  her  father,  were 
connected  with  the  place.  She  had  read  so  many 
books  in  his  great  leather  chair  !  She  had  learned  to 
write  at  his  desk.  Even  the  two  oil  portraits,  of  his 
grandfather  in  a  stiff  stock  and  his  grandmother  in 
crinoline,  had  become  in  a  way  personal  possessions. 
She  must  leave  all  this,  must  learn  to  live  in  new 
surroundings. 

But  this  regret  was  only  half  conscious.  There 
were  more  vivid  sensations  of  expectancy.  Above 

312 


THE  PALACE  OF  DREAMS  313 

all  she  tremblingly  hoped  for  his  approbation.  When 
the  Great  Jahwe  had  completed  his  six  days'  labor  and 
was  looking  it  over,  the  Earth  must  have  had  a  pal 
pitating  moment  of  suspense  while  it  waited  His  ver 
dict.  Yetta  felt  herself  the  work  of  Walter's  hands. 
Would  he  say,  " It  is  good"? 

Her  love  had  made  her  foolishly  humble.  An  ob 
jective  observer  would  have  doubted  if  Walter  was 
worthy  to  unlace  her  shoes.  The  fairies  had  been 
generous  at  his  christening.  They  had  given  him 
health  and  wealth  and  brains.  He  himself  would 
have  admitted  that  most  of  his  talents  had  lain  idle, 
wrapped  in  a  napkin.  Yetta  had  not  been  so  richly 
endowed.  At  fifteen,  with  hardly  any  education,  the 
Fates  had  put  her  in  a  sweat-shop.  But  she  had  been 
given  one  priceless  talent  —  a  keen  hunger  for  an 
ever  larger  life.  No  slightest  opportunity  for  growth 
had  she  let  slip.  Walter  was  a  pitiful  example  of 
wasted  oportunities  compared  to  this  young  woman 
of  twenty-two. 

There  was  a  more  subtle  disparity  between  them. 

Yetta's  beliefs  were  passionate  faiths,  Walter's  were 
intellectual  convictions.  The  dozen  odd  years'  differ 
ence  in  age  might  have  explained  this,  but  it  went 
deeper.  Walter  had  never  had  the  knack  of  being  an 
intimate  part  of  activity.  He  was  an  observer  rather 
than  a  participant  in  life.  He  never  got  closer  to  the 
stage  than  the  wings.  And  more  often  he  sat  in  a  box. 
Between  her  ardent  faith  and  his  tired  disillusion 
ment  lay  a  chasm  which  was  more  than  a  matter  of 
years.  But  she,  being  in  love  with  him,  and  hardly 
knowing  him  at  all  —  at  most  she  had  had  a  dozen  talks 
with  him  —  could  not  see  this. 


314  COMRADE  YETTA 

Would  he  give  her  more  than  approbation?  As 
long  as  she  could,  Yetta  tried  to  avoid  a  definite  answer 
to  this  question.  But  it  became  insistent.  She  knew 
he  had  been  in  love  with  Mabel.  Eleanor  Mead's 
gossip  had  supplemented  her  own  conviction.  At 
first  it  had  seemed  the  inevitable  that  he  should  love 
the  wonderful  Miss  Train.  But  the  last  year  had  seen 
almost  a  quarrel  between  Yetta  and  Mabel.  There 
were  constant  disagreements  as  to  the  policy  of  the 
Woman's  Trade  Union  League.  Mabel  did  not  want 
it  to  become  avowedly  Socialist  and  Yetta  did.  Mabel 
felt  that  she  had  a  discoverer's  right  to  Yetta  and  was 
provoked  whenever  her  protegee  showed  a  will  of  her 
own.  It  is  hard  enough  for  men  to  keep  friends  in 
the  face  of  serious  and  long-continued  difference  of 
opinion.  Women,  with  lesser  experience  in  the  world 
of  affairs,  with  a  more  personal  tradition,  find  it  harder. 
It  had  come  to  a  climax  over  Yetta's  resignation  from 
The  Star.  Mabel  had  been  very  indignant  and  had 
called  it  a  piece  of  stupid  Quixotism.  It  had  shown 
Yetta  very  clearly  the  fundamental  gap  between  their 
points  of  view.  They  still  called  each  other  by  their 
first  names  and  professed  undying  affection.  But  it 
was  hard  nowadays  for  Yetta  to  realize  how  the 
wonderful  Walter  had  ever  loved  this  rather  narrow- 
minded  woman.  She  knew  where  Mabel  bought  her 
false  hair.  Surely  Walter  would  get  over  his  infatua 
tion.  Vague  hopes  inevitably  mingled  with  her 
thoughts  of  the  future.  But  she  was  almost  relieved 
by  his  unexpectedly  long  stay  in  Paris. 

Walter  had  hardly  seen  the  lights  of  Le  Havre  sink 
below  the  horizon  before  he  began  to  regret  his  decision 
to  go  to  New  York.  Once  more  hope  had  made  a  fool 


THE  PALACE  OF  DREAMS  315 

of  him.  What  chance  was  there  that  Mabel  would 
have  changed  her  mind  in  these  six  months?  Cer 
tainly  she  had  not  loved  him  when  she  had  written  that 
miserably  cold  note  of  welcome.  His  escapade  with 
Beatrice  would  hardly  help  matters.  What  perver 
sity  was  it  that  drove  him  home  to  receive  a  new 
humiliation  ? 

Two  days  out  they  ran  into  a  gale,  and  Walter,  who 
was  a  good  sailor,  had  the  promenade  deck  almost  to 
himself.  Standing  up  forward,  an  arm  round  a  stan 
chion  for  a  brace,  the  spray  in  his  face,  it  seemed  as  if 
the  cobwebs  which  had  been  smothering  him  were 
blown  away.  He  could  look  at  himself  calmly,  ob 
jectively.  One  question  after  another  posed  itself,  and 
he  sought  the  answers,  not  as  an  infatuated  fool,  but  as 
a  man  who  has  " suffered  unto  wisdom." 

What  was  there  for  him  to  hope  for  from  Mabel? 
Nothing.  Absolutely  nothing.  Even  if  she  relented, 
it  was  a  sorry  prospect.  If  now,  after  six  years,  after 
her  youth  had  passed,  she  suddenly  decided  to  pick 
up  what  she  had  so  long  despised,  it  would  be  in  dis 
couragement.  He  had  more  disillusions  than  enough 
of  his  own.  And  Mabel  in  slippers  was  a  revolting 
idea.  The  romantic  thing  for  him  to  do,  now  that  ro 
mance  was  dead,  was  to  kill  himself  on  the  lady's  front 
doorstep.  But  the  age  of  romance  had  passed  for  him. 

For  the  first  time  in  six  years  he  looked  out  upon  a 
future  in  which  Mabel  played  no  part.  Beatrice  had 
said  he  must  find  some  useful  work.  There  was  the 
Oxford  offer.  Of  course  every  acquisition  to  the 
museum  of  human  knowledge  is  worth  while.  But 
it  was  very  hard  for  him  to  apply  this  theory  to  his 
specialty.  What  good  did  it  do  any  one  to  have  him 


316  COMRADE  YETTA 

piece  together  the  broken  fragments  of  a  semicivili- 
zation,  so  long  dead  ?  He  could  think  of  no  branch  of 
study  which  more  truly  deserved  Carlyle's  jibe  of  "dry- 
as-dust."  It  was  perhaps  better  than  suicide,  but  was 
there  no  more  human  sort  of  utility  for  him  ?  As 
Beatrice  had  said,  the  "social  conscience'7  was  keen  in 
him.  He  wanted  to  serve  the  people  of  his  day  and 
generation. 

The  one  activity  he  could  think  of  was  suggested 
by  the  news  in  Yetta's  letters  of  the  English  Socialist 
newspaper  which  Isadore  Braun  was  editing  and  to 
which  she  was  occasionally  contributing.  His  sur 
plus  money,  quite  a  lot  of  it  had  piled  up  in  the  last 
three  years,  would  help  immensely.  Even  if  they  could 
not  raise  enough  to  maintain  a  daily,  his  income  would 
suffice  for  a  weekly.  The  three  of  them  would  be  a 
strong  editorial  combination.  More  and  more  the  idea 
attracted  him.  They  could  make  a  representative 
publication  of  it.  Isadore  with  his  faith  in  the  political 
party,  Yetta  in  close  touch  with  the  trade-unions,  and 
he  to  furnish  a  broader,  more  philosophical  expression 
of  the  movement  of  revolt.  They  were  three  able, 
intelligent  people  who  were  not  afraid.  What  better 
thing  could  he  do  with  the  remnant  of  his  life  than  to 
weld  them  into  an  organized  force?  Gradually  they 
would  attract  other  brains  to  their  group.  Just  such 
an  intellectual  centre  was  what  the  movement  needed. 
The  idea  at  least  had  the  virtue  of  stirring  a  -wave  of 
true  enthusiasm  in  him. 

This  line  of  thought  brought  Yetta  to  his  mind  — 
and  Beatrice's  advice.  He  smiled  at  the  idea.  In 
tellectually  he  might  admit  that  it  would  be  well  for 
him  to  marry.  But  the  Yetta  he  remembered  was  a 


THE  PALACE  OF  DREAMS  317 

frightened  little  East  Side  girl,  who  had  not  enough 
sense  to  keep  out  of  the  clutches  of  a  cadet.  Of  course 
she  had  grown  up,  her  letters  showed  that.  And  she 
had  been  a  pretty  youngster.  If,  as  Beatrice  believed, 
she  was  in  love  with  him,  it  might  possibly  work  out 
that  way  in  time.  But  he  was  in  no  mood  for  romance. 
Hunger  for  a  life  of  activity  kept  his  mind  on  his  pro 
ject  of  work.  The  few  times  his  thoughts  touched 
on  Yetta,  he  wrenched  them  back  to  what  the  three 
of  them  might  accomplish  with  the  paper. 

As  the  ship  slipped  into  its  berth,  Walter  leaned 
over  the  rail  and  eagerly  scanned  the  upturned  faces 
of  the  welcoming  crowd  on  the  dock.  When  at  last 
he  convinced  himself  that  there  was  no  one  there  whom 
he  knew,  he  suddenly  realized  that  once  more  the  hope 
had  tripped  him  up.  He  had  been  looking  for  Mabel. 
He  went  back  to  the  smoking-room  and  tried  to  regain 
his  self-respect  by  a  glass  of  whiskey.  As  the  cab 
took  him  through  the  familiar  streets,  he  was  grimly 
telling  himself  that  it  would  never  happen  again; 
Mabel  did  not  exist  any  more. 

Yetta  was  waiting  for  him  in  his  rooms.  She  had 
spent  her  last  night  there,  and  at  eight  in  the  morning 
had  carried  her  valise  —  the  trunk  had  gone  before  — 
to  her  new  quarters  on  Waverly  Place.  She  could  not 
afford  a  place  to  herself  and  had  gone  in  with  another 
Socialist  girl,  Sadie  Michelson,  in  joint  control  of  a 
small  flat.  While  she  was  waiting  through  the  morn 
ing  hours,  she  rearranged  his  business  papers  for  the 
fiftieth  time.  There  was  a  pile  of  receipts,  year  by 
year,  each  one  numbered  to  correspond  to  its  check. 
There  were  the  check-books,  each  voucher  pinned  to 
its  stub.  The  bank-book  had  just  been  balanced. 


318  COMRADE  YETTA 

It  was  about  eleven  when  the  cab  rattled  up  to 
the  door.  From  her  seat  in  the  window  she  saw  him 
get  out.  Casting  a  quick  glance  over  the  room  to 
reassure  herself  that  everything  was  exactly  as  he  had 
left  it,  she  opened  the  door  and  went  out  on  the  landing. 
"  Welcome  home,"  she  called  down  to  him. 

It  did  not  occur  to  her  that  what  she  was  doing 
was  dramatic.  But  the  lonely  hearted  man  who  was 
struggling  up  the  narrow  stairs  with  his  two  grips  was 
deeply  moved  by  her  words  and  the  vision  which 
greeted  his  upturned  eyes.  A  flood  of  light  came  out 
through  the  door  of  his  room  and  illumined  her  as  she 
stood  above  him  on  the  landing. 

"  Hello, "  he  said  out  loud.  But  to  himself  he  said, 
" My  God!" 

Yetta 's  girlish  promise  of  beauty  had  been  richly 
fulfilled.  Her  figure  had  become  more  definite.  There 
had  been  a  sort  of  precociousness  about  the  sweat 
shop  girl  he  remembered.  The  Yetta  who  greeted 
him  now  was  a  fully  developed  symmetrical  woman. 
Her  face,  her  arms,  her  neck  had  caught  up  with  the 
rest  of  her  body.  There  was  nothing  fragile  about  her 
any  more.  One  no  longer  feared  that  she  might  be 
suddenly  snuffed  out  and  leave  nothing  but  the  haunt 
ing  memory  of  her  eyes.  More  striking,  and  at  the 
same  time  more  subtle,  was  the  transformation  from 
self-conscious  awkwardness  to  the  assured  grace  of  a 
personage  who  has  found  a  place  in  life.  The  Yetta 
he  remembered  had  been  impulsive  —  a  creature  of 
extremes  —  one  moment  lost  in  a  childish  abandon  of 
enthusiasm,  the  next  embarrassed  and  gauche.  This 
woman  was  calm,  restrained,  and  while  perfectly  con 
scious  of  herself  was  not  self-conscious. 


THE   PALACE  OF   DREAMS  319 

He  had  remembered  her  as  pretty.  Good  food  and  a 
healthy  life  had  taken  from  her  the  exotic,  orchid-like 
charm  of  her  girlhood.  Yet  she  had  grown  greatly  in 
beauty.  Her  face  had  gained  immensely  in  " range'7 
—  to  borrow  a  musical  term.  It  held  the  capacity  of 
a  whole  gamut  of  expressions  it  had  before  lacked. 
Her  eyes  were  as  beautiful  as  ever,  and  they  had  looked 
on  many  things.  Her  mouth  had  always  been  well- 
proportioned.  Now  any  one  could  see  that  it  was  a 
perfected  instrument.  There  were  thousands  of  things 
it  could  say.  Her  cheeks  had  flushed  or  paled  with  a 
myriad  of  emotions  and  had  grown  more  beautiful. 
And  yet  the  mass  of  rich  brown  hair,  which  had  always 
been  the  crown  of  her  beauty,  had  not  begun  to  lose 
its  lustre. 

When  Walter  reached  the  head  of  the  stairs  and 
shook  hands  with  her,  she  had  changed  from  the  dim 
mest  of  possibilities  to  a  vivid  desire. 

"Did  you  have  a  good  passage?" 

"Fine.     A  gale  all  the  way  over." 

There  were  a  few  more  banalities. 

"Good  Lord,  Yetta,"  he  exploded.  "How  you've 
grown  up  and  changed  !" 

Yetta  had  hoped  for  his  approbation  of  her  works. 
He  was  admiring  her  person.  He  was  looking  her 
over  with  frank  pleasure.  The  blush  hurt  her  cheek. 
She  turned  away  to  hide  it. 

"Here's  a  note  Mabel  gave  me  for  you,"  she  said. 

Walter  took  it  mechanically.  He  ought  to  have 
tossed  it  into  the  waste-paper  basket.  But  the  hope, 
the  fool,  the  idiot  hope  grabbed  him  by  the  throat. 
Once  more.  He  tore  it  open.  This  would  be  posi 
tively  the  last  concession  to  the  Dream.  —  Eleanor 


320  COMRADE  YETTA 

Mead  was  decorating  a  country  house  out  near  Stam 
ford,  Mabel  had  gone  out  to  pass  the  week-end  with 
her.  She  was  glad  to  hear  that  Walter  was  back  and 
looked  forward  to  hearing  about  his  adventures.  She 
judged  from  the  papers  that  he  had  had  a  lot  —  So  ! 
Spending  a  few  days  with  Eleanor,  whom  she  saw  all 
the  time,  was  more  important  than  staying  in  town 
to  greet  him,  whom  she  had  not  seen  for  years.  He 
stuck  the  letter  in  his  pocket  and  turned  to  Yetta,  who 
was  watching  him  closely. 

" How's  'Saph'  coming  on?"  he  asked  lightly. 

"I  don't  see  much  of  her." 

"Good,"  he  laughed.  "She  was  never  exactly  a 
chum  of  mine." 

"Here  are  all  your  business  papers,"  Yetta  said, 
going  over  to  his  desk,  "receipts  and  all  that." 

"Oh!  bother  the  receipts,"  he  said.  "I  want  to 
talk.  How's  Isadore's  paper  getting  along?" 

"There  isn't  any  money,"  she  said  with  a  grimace. 
"There's  a  note  on  yesterday's  editorial  page,  which 
says  if  they  can't  raise  five  thousand  this  week  they'll 
have  to  stop.  I  guess  one  thousand  will  keep  them 
going.  They'll  get  it.  But  in  a  couple  of  weeks  it 
will  be  the  same  thing  over  again.  I  guess  it's  doomed." 

"I've  been  thinking  about  it,"  Walter  said,  "and 
I've  got  a  scheme.  Isadore  tackled  too  much  in  a 
daily.  That  costs  such  a  frightful  lot.  There  isn't 
yet  a  big  enough  Socialist  audience  to  support  it. 
A  weekly  —  a  good  lively,  red-hot  weekly  —  is  the 
thing."  " 

He  went  on  to  elaborate  his  idea.  Gradually  the 
constraint  which  Yetta  had  felt  at  first  wore  off.  She 
curled  up  on  the  window-seat  and  listened  to  his  talk 


THE  PALACE  OF  DREAMS  321 

as  she  had  done  the  first  day  in  his  room  —  as  she  had 
done  ever  since  in  her  dreams.  She  knew  it  would  be 
hard  work  to  persuade  Isadore  to  give  up  the  daily, 
but  she  felt  that  sooner  or  later  he  would  have  to. 
And  in  Walter's  scheme  was  the  promise  of  collabora 
tion  and  constant  association  with  him.  She  could 
hardly  be  expected  to  bring  forth  any  serious  criti 
cism. 

While  he  talked,  she  had  the  opportunity  to  look  him 
over.  After  all  he  was  not  a  god.  The  thing  which 
surprised  her  most  was  his  hair  —  it  was  shot  through 
with  irregular  patches  of  gray.  But  this  was  only  a 
detail.  The  soft  life  of  the  last  few  months  in  Paris 
had  not  quite  killed  the  tan  which  the  glare  of  the 
Persian  sun  had  given  him.  He  looked  very  rugged 
and  strong  —  if  his  hands  had  been  larger,  he  might 
have  sat  as  a  model  for  Rodin.  And  the  halo  of  fame 
played  about  his  forehead.  The  newspapers  had  given 
some  space  to  him,  and  two  or  three  lurid  "  Sunday 
stories"  had  been  run  about  "the  siege."  They  had 
recounted  the  various  honors  which  had  been  given 
him.  Yetta  knew  that  the  narrow  red  ribbon  in  his 
buttonhole  was  the  Legion  of  Honor.  And  he  was 
calmly  proposing  to  give  up  what  seemed  to  her  a  great 
renown  for  the  obscure  career  of  Socialist  propaganda. 
Her  love  put  forth  blossoms. 

"Gee,"  he  interrupted  himself  at  last.  "It's  long 
past  lunch-time.  Let's  go  over  to  the  Lafayette.  Any 
of  the  old  waiters  still  there?" 

Although  Walter  insisted  that  the  cooking  had 
deteriorated,  it  was  a  resplendent  meal  to  Yetta.  The 
proprietor  came  to  their  table  and  asked  if  he  might 
present  the  French  Consul,  who  was  lunching  there 


322  COMRADE  YETTA 

and  who  wanted  to  congratulate  Walter  on  the  red 
ribbon.  The  Consul  made  a  formal  and  stilted  speech 
on  behalf  of  the  French  Colony  in  New  York.  Yetta 
was  as  much  impressed  as  Walter  was  bored.  When 
this  disturbance  was  over,  he  made  her  talk  about  her 
self.  The  meal  was  finished  before  she  was  half  through 
with  her  news. 

"Come  on,"  he  said.  "It's  too  blazing  hot  to  be 
in  town.  Let's  jump  on  a  ferry  and  go  down  to  Staten 
Island." 

"I  ought  to  go  up  to  the  League." 

"Oh  !  bother  the  League.  One  doesn't  come  home 
from  Persia  every  day  in  the  year.  I  want  to 
celebrate." 

All  New  York's  four  millions  seemed  bent  on  the  same 
errand,  but  they  managed  to  crowd  into  the  "elevated," 
and  after  a  breathless  scramble  at  the  Battery  fought 
their  way  to  places  on  the  ferry,  and  at  last  found  a 
fairly  secluded  spot  on  the  beach.  He  listened  through 
the  afternoon  to  the  story  of  how  she  had  spent  the 
three  and  a  half  years  of  his  absence.  Just  as  at  first, 
she  still  found  it  easy  to  talk  to  him.  Sure  of  his 
quick  understanding,  she  found  herself  telling  him 
everything.  She  told  him  of  Isadore's  proposal. 
That  disturbed  him  somewhat. 

"Will  it  interfere  with  the  three  of  us  working  to 
gether?"  he  asked. 

"Why,  no,"  she  said,  her  eyes  opening  wider  with 
surprise.  "Of  course  not.  I  guess  he's  got  over  it. 
It  was  two  years  ago.  But  anyhow  we've  been  work 
ing  together  all  the  time.  He  wouldn't  let  a  thing 
like  that  interfere  with  work." 

And  Walter,   judging  Isadore  by  himself,   decided 


THE   PALACE  OF  DREAMS  323 

that  it  could  not  have  been  very  serious.  Although 
Yetta  did  not  know  it,  she  was,  in  almost  every  word, 
showing  Walter  her  love.  There  was  a  naive  direct 
ness  in  all  her  relations  with  people.  It  was  always 
hard  for  her  to  act  a  part.  She  talked  to  Walter  as  a 
woman  naturally  talks  to  a  man  she  loves.  Even 
without  Beatrice's  hint,  he  would  have  understood. 

It  was  a  new  sensation  to  feel  himself  loved  so  simply 
and  wholly.  Such  love  is  rare  in  this  world,  and  no 
man  sees  it  offered  without  a  deep  feeling  of  awe. 
What  should  he  do  ?  Should  he  turn  her  loyalty  into 
a  derision,  as  had  been  the  fate  of  his  own?  His  life 
counted  for  very  little  to  him.  It  had  been  burnt 
out.  That  the  love  of  this  fine,  clean,  loyal  young 
woman  might  be  pleasant  to  him  seemed  to  count 
relatively  little.  He  did  not  feel  particularly  selfish, 
he  was  only  a  fool.  He  was  sorry  for  her,  and 
thought  he  could  make  her  happy. 

Beatrice,  who  knew  him  better  than  any  other  woman 
did,  thought  he  could.  Of  course  he  realized  that  it 
was  not  exactly  a  romantic  proposition.  He  had  small 
use  for  romance.  But  if  any  one  had  charged  him  with 
planning  to  seduce  Yetta  into  marriage  under  pretext 
of  love,  he  would  have  indignantly  denied  it.  What 
does  love  mean?  Undoubtedly  his  feeling  and  hers 
were  miles  apart.  But,  after  all,  he  was  fond  of  her. 
Even  in  a  most  impersonal  way  he  admired  her  im 
mensely.  He  had  liked  her  spirit  from  the  first.  He 
had  not  listened  unmoved  to  the  story  of  her  struggle 
of  these  three  years.  There  was  nothing  he  admired 
more  than  such  capacity  for  consistent  effort.  And 
it  took  a  serious  exercise  of  will  power  to  think  about 
her  impersonally.  It  was  so  much  easier  to  lie  back 


324  COMRADE  YETTA 

on  the  sand  and  refresh  his  senses  with  the  charm  of 
her  youth. 

Some  one  might  have  reminded  him  that  emotion 
ally  he  was  very  much  of  a  wreck,  that  her  youth  had 
a  right  to  demand  its  like,  that  his  wearied  disillusion 
ment  was  no  match  for  her  fresh,  exuberant  faith.  He 
would  have  answered  that  she  was  not  a  child,  she  was 
old  enough  to  choose. 

He  listened  and  watched  her  and  the  sun  slipped  down 
among  the  Jersey  hills. 

"It's  time  to  be  going  back,"  Yetta  said. 

"I'm  quite  happy  here,  and  when  we  get  hungry, 
there  are  restaurants  about." 

"I  think  Isadore  will  come  to  see  you  to-night.  I 
told  him  you  were  due  to-day." 

"Oh,  bother  Isadore.  Bother  everything  except 
this  delectable  breeze  and  the  smell  of  the  sea  and  you 
and  me  and  the  moon.  Look  at  it,  Yetta.  It  was  at 
its  unforgettable  best  last  night  —  but  it  will  be  better 
to-night.  It's  going  to  be  very  beautiful  right  here 
where  we  are.  And  much  as  I  like  and  admire  Isadore, 
he  isn't  beautiful. 

"Life,"  he  went  on  in  a  moment,  "and  its  swirl  of 
duties  will  grab  us  soon  enough,  Yetta.  We're  going 
to  be  too  busy  on  that  paper,  my  friend,  to  hunt  out 
such  places  as  this.  Let's  sit  very,  very  still  and  be 
happy  as  long  as  we  may." 

They  both  were  very  still  as  they  watched  the  twi 
light  fall  over  the  Bay.  The  little  red  and  green  and 
white  lights  of  the  passing  boats  swayed  softly  in  the 
gentle  swell.  A  great  liner  crept  up  the  channel  to 
wards  the  Narrows,  row  above  row  of  gleaming  port 
holes.  Coney  Island  —  section  by  section  —  woke 


THE  PALACE  OF  DREAMS  325 

to  a  glare  of  electricity.  The  blade  of  a  searchlight 
at  Fort  Hamilton  cut  great  slashes  in  the  night.  A 
strident  orchestra  in  a  restaurant  behind  them  tried 
in  vain  to  attract  their  attention. 

Yetta  found  it  easy  to  be  happy ;  she  felt  that  Walter 
approved  of  her. 

"  Yetta,"  he  said,  rolling  over  closer  to  where  she  sat, 
her  back  against  the  rotting  beam  of  a  wrecked  ship, 
"  Yetta,  I  didn't  expect  to  find  you  so  good  to  look  at. 
I  wonder  if  you  know  how  very  beautiful  you  are." 

The  wreck  against  which  she  leaned  cast  a  moon- 
shadow  across  her  face,  and  he  could  not  see  the  desper 
ate  blush  which  flooded  her  cheeks  and  neck.  Some 
thing  laid  hold  of  her  heart  and  told  it  to  be  quiet,  to 
beat  gently  and  not  to  make  a  noise. 

"But  that's  not  the  way  to  begin,  Yetta.  It's  hard 
for  me  to  say  what  I  want  to,  because  —  well  —  I'm 
past  the  poetic  age.  I  couldn't  sing  now  —  nor  play 
on  a  lute  —  if  I  tried.  Perhaps  it's  just  as  well  to 
talk  prose,  because  it's  all  very  serious. 

"  Since  I've  finished  up  this  Persian  job,  I've  been 
thinking  a  lot  about  what  to  do  next.  I  could  go  on 
with  that  kind  of  work  very  easily.  But  I  want  some 
more  concrete  kind  of  usefulness.  You'll  know  what 
I  mean.  I  want  to  make  my  life  count  at  something 
more  than  dry  scholarship.  And  the  only  thing  I  can 
think  of  that  seems  worth  doing  is  to  pitch  in  and  help 
Isadore  on  this  paper.  We'd  need  you  in  the  combine. 
And  that  means  thinking  about  you.  I've  done  a  lot 
of  it.  Wondering  what  manner  of  person  you  had 
grown  to  be.  I  was  sure  we'd  be  able  to  work  well 
together.  But  I  did  not  expect  to  find  you  so  wonder 
ful.  Less  than  four  years  ago  you  were  only  a  girl. 


326  COMRADE  YETTA 

You've  grown  amazingly,  Yetta,  grown  in  wisdom  and 
in  beauty  —  beauty  of  soul  and  face. 

"I'm  a  lonely  and  rather  battered  old  bachelor, 
Yetta.  And  no  man  really  wants  to  be  a  bachelor. 
Sometimes,  coming  over  on  the  boat,  I  thought  about 
you  —  in  that  connection.  But  I  couldn't  help  think 
ing  of  you  as  a  young  girl,  lovable  and  very  dear,  but 
very  young.  And  I'm  getting  old.  My  hair  is  turn 
ing  gray,  and  many  things  turn  gray  inside,  Yetta, 
before  the  hair  turns.  You  don't  seem  so  painfully 
young  to  me  now,  and  the  dream  doesn't  seem  ludi 
crous.  We're  going  to  work  together,  Yetta,  be  part 
ners  and  comrades.  I've  very  little  to  offer  you,  but 
it  would  be  a  great  thing  for  me  if  you  would  also  be 
my  wife." 

"I  thought  you  were  in  love  with  Mabel,"  she  said. 

The  cool  sound  of  her  words  startled  her.     With 
the  heavens  opening,  could  she  speak  in  so  common 
place  a  voice?     They  sounded  so  utterly  inadequate 
that  she  would  have  given  worlds  to  have  them  back 
unsaid.     It  was  a  moment  before  he  sat  up  and  an 
swered  her. 

"I  was." 

"I  told  you,  Yetta,"  he  went  on  in  a  moment,  "thai 
I'm  a  bit  dilapidated,  getting  gray. 

"Yetta,"  he  began  again,  forgetting  that  he  was  going 
to  let  her  choose  freely,  "you  believe  in  the  refor 
mation  even  of  criminals.  Isn't  there  any  hope  for 
me?" 

Her  arms  were  about  him,  her  sobs  shook  him,  he; 
could  feel  the  moisture  of  her  tears  against  his  cheek. 
Except  for   the  sharp  rasp  of   her   breath,  they  were 
very  still.     Suddenly  he  felt  ashamed  of  himself.     What 


THE  PALACE  OF  DREAMS  327 

did  he  have  to  give  her  in  exchange  for  such  vibrant 
love  ?  But  gradually  the  sense  of  contact,  the  pressure 
of  her  arms  and  her  soft  young  body  brushed  aside 
this  feeling  that  he  was  cheating  her.  Taking  her  face 
in  his  hands  he  turned  it  towards  the  moon  and  kissed 
her.  When  he  held  back  her  head  so  that  the  light  fell 
on  her  face,  its  deep  solemnity  frightened  him. 

"  Can't  you  smile  a  little  ?"  he  asked. 

The  tears  welled  up  in  her  eyes  again,  but  a  smile 
such  as  he  had  never  seen  came,  too.  A  laugh  rippled 
up  her  throat  and  rang  out  into  the  night. 

"Oh,  Walter,  Walter,  I'm  such  a  little  fool  to  cry. 
But  if  I  hadn't  cried,  I'd  have  died." 

They  forgot  all  about  the  moon  they  had  waited  out 
to  see.  Like  dozens  of  other  lovers  on  the  beach  that 
night,  they  forgot  about  supper.  They  missed  the 
one  o'clock  boat  and  sat  outside  of  the  ferryhouse  in 
the  shadow  of  some  packing-cases  till  two  o'clock. 
They  decided  that  it  would  be  fun  to  walk  home  through 
the  deserted  streets.  When  they  could  think  of  no 
further  reason  to  pass  and  repass  her  door,  she  kissed 
him  "a  really  truly  good  night." 

"I'll  wake  you  up  by  telephone  in  the  morning," 
she  said,  "and  come  round  and  make  your  coffee." 

For  half  an  hour  after  she  had  undressed  she  sat  in 
her  window  looking  up  at  the  moon  above  the  airshaft. 
She  did  not  want  ever  to  forget  how  the  moon  looked 
that  night.  But  fearing  that  she  might  oversleep  and 
lose  the  chance  to  breakfast  with  him,  she  at  last  went 
to  bed. 

For  an  hour  more  Walter  paced  up  and  down  in 
Washington  Square,  between  the  sleeping  figures 
huddled  up  on  the  park  benches  or  stretched  uneasily 


328  COMRADE  YETTA 

on  the  hard  dry  ground.  He  was  ill  at  ease.  He  wished 
he  might  go  to  a  hotel,  some  place  less  saturated  with 
memories  of  Mabel  than  his  own  diggings.  Had  he 
lied  when  he  had  used  the  past  tense  about  Mabel? 
Did  he  love  her  still?  Was  it  fair  to  talk  marriage 
to  Yetta  with  this  uncertainty  in  his  mind  ? 

"  Morbid  scruples  !"  he  told  himself  disgustedly,  and 
went  to  bed.  But  he  dreamed  about  Mabel. 

Far  away  in  Stamford,  she  also  was  late  in  falling 
asleep.  That  evening  she  and  Eleanor  had  played 
together  for  several  hours.  But  at  first  the  music 
had  gone  wrong.  Mabel,  like  Beatrice,  like  Isadore 
—  like  everybody  —  knew  that  Yetta  was  in  love  with 
Walter.  She  was  thinking  about  them,  wondering 
about  their  meeting,  and  it  had  thrown  her  into  dis 
cord  with  Eleanor.  They  had  almost  had  a  quarrel 
over  it,  for  Eleanor  guessed  the  cause.  At  last,  with 
an  effort  of  will,  Mabel  had  lost  herself  in  the  music, 
a  closer  harmony  than  usual  had  sprung  up  between 
the  two  friends  —  it  had  ended  as  a  very  happy  even 
ing.  But  after  Eleanor  fell  asleep,  the  thought  of 
Walter  and  Yetta  came  back  again  disturbingly. 
Eleanor,  Mabel  told  herself,  was  a  fool  to  be  jealous. 
She  did  not  love  Walter.  She  would  not  have  left 
the  city  except  that  she  wanted  to  give  Yetta  a  clear 
field.  She  hoped  they  would  marry,  for  she  liked  them 
both.  But  how  she  envied  Yetta!  There  was  no 
treasure  she  could  dream  of  which  she  would  not  have 
sacrificed  to  feel  herself  in  love  as  Yetta  was. 

A  little  after  eight  in  the  morning,  Walter  was  shaken 
out  of  sleep  by  the  noisy  din  of  his  telephone  bell. 

"Good  morning,  Beloved,"  Yetta's  fresh  voice  came 
to  his  sleepy  ears.  "I  couldn't  call  you  up  before  — 


THE  PALACE  OF  DREAMS  329 

not  till  my  room-mate  went  out.  I  could  get  dressed 
and  round  to  your  room  in  three  minutes,  but  I'll  give 
you  ten.  Put  the  water  on.  You  can't  have  slept 
much,  because  a  lot  of  times  I  felt  you  kiss  me." 

"Well,  don't  waste  time  talking  about  it,"  he  inter 
rupted.  "Hurry." 

"All  right,"  and  he  heard  the  click  of  her  receiver. 

The  scruples  of  the  night  before  had  vanished  at 
the  sound  of  her  voice.  He  jumped  into  his  bath  and 
clothes  with  a  keen  thrill  of  expectancy.  He  sat  in 
the  window-seat  and  watched  for  her  coming.  God  ! 
What  a  queer  world  it  was  !  He  had  been  thinking 
over  the  possible  expediency  of  suicide,  and  now  life 
was  opening  up  to  him  in  thrilling  vistas. 

He  waved  his  hand  when  he  caught  sight  of  her,  and 
pinched  himself  to  be  sure  he  was  awake  when  he  noticed 
her  quicken  her  pace. 

He  pretended  to  scold  her  for  being  slow.  A  dozen 
times  he  interrupted  the  coffee-making  at  critical 
moments  to  kiss  her.  She  said  it  would  surely  be 
spoiled,  and  he  swore  he  did  not  care.  Yetta  pretended 
to  be  in  a  hurry  to  finish  the  dishes  and  get  uptown  to 
work.  It  was  a  very  meagre  pretence.  And  what 
wonderful  plans  they  made  !  With  his  arm  about  her 
they  explored  the  two  rooms  in  the  back,  which  the 
carriage  painter  used  as  a  storehouse  for  his  brushes 
and  cans.  He  would  have  to  vacate.  One  they  would 
turn  into  a  dining-room.  Yetta  spoke  of  the  other 
as  the  guest-room.  But  Walter  christened  it  "the 
nursery." 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

THE    CKASH 

WHEN  it  was  time  for  lunch,  Yetta  said  she  would 
rather  cook  than  go  to  a  restaurant,  so  they  raided  a 
delicatessen  store. 

It  was  during  the  afternoon  that  the  first  shadow  fell 
across  their  dream.  Yetta  asked  him  if  he  had  heard 
about  Mrs.  Karner's  divorce. 

"Yes,  I  know." 

There  was  a  queer  ring  in  his  voice  which  made  her 
look  up ;  something  in  his  face  disturbed  her. 

" What's  the  matter?" 

He  took  his  arms  from  about  her  and  got  up. 

" Yetta,"  he  said,  pacing  the  room,  "I  suppose  I'm 
a  fool  to  ask  you.  But  how  much  do  you  want  to 
know?  Very  few  men  in  this  world  of  ours  live  up 
to  their  own  ideals.  I  certainly  haven't.  I  told  you  I 
was  getting  gray.  Well  —  she's  one  of  the  gray  spots 
—  inside.  I'd  rather  not  tell  you  about  it.  It  will 
only  hurt  you.  But  I'm  not  a  good  liar.  You  noticed 
something  at  the  bare  mention  of  her  name.  But  if 
you  want  to  know,  I'll  tell  you." 

For  a  moment  Yetta  was  silent. 

"I  think  you'd  better  tell  me,"  she  said.  "I'm 
not  afraid." 

330 


THE  CRASH  331 

But  she  was.  She  had  accepted  the  idea  that  Mabel 
had  preceded  her  in  his  affection.  She  had  not  thought 
of  other  women.  This  was  disturbing  enough.  But 
what  really  frightened  her  was  that  he  was  reluctant 
to  tell.  If  there  was  any  one  tangible  thing  which 
love  meant  to  her,  it  was  frankness.  She  had  told 
him  everything  without  his  asking.  Here  was  some 
thing  he  had  held  back.  What  it  was  did  not  matter 
so  much  as  the  different  point  of  view  it  showed.  It 
was  startling  to  realize  how  very  little  she  knew  of  his 
life. 

He  pulled  up  a  chair  beside  the  window-seat  where 
she  lay,  and  told  her  about  Beatrice ;  told  it  in  a  way 
that  did  not  make  her  seem  offensive  to  Yetta.  He 
told  the  story  as  truthfully  as  might  be,  without  giving 
its  real  explanation  —  his  heartbreak  over  Mabel. 
He  did  not  want  to  bring  this  in.  If  Yetta  had  asked 
him  point-blank  how  long  it  was  since  he  had  been  in 
love  with  Mabel,  he  would  not  have  tried  to  deceive 
her.  But  the  telling  of  it  would  only  distress  her. 

"It  may  not  sound  to  you  like  a  pretty  story,'7  he 
ended.  "I'm  not  proud  of  it.  But  I'm  not  exactly 
ashamed  either.  It's  a  sick  sort  of  a  world  we  live  in. 
There  are  better  days  coming  when  the  relations  be 
tween  men  and  women  will  be  saner  and  sweeter  — 
and  finer.  But  I  don't  think  more  lightly  of  Beatrice 
because  of  this.  She's  a  remarkable  woman.  Life 
has  not  been  very  kind  to  her.  But  she's  fought  her 
way  to  the  place  where  she  is  through  with  pretence. 
That  at  least  was  fine  about  our  friendship.  We  were 
not  pretending.  I  haven't  told  it  very  well,  perhaps 
I  haven't  made  you  understand.  But  I  hope  Beatrice 
can  look  back  on  it  without  being  ashamed.  I  can." 


COMRADE  YETTA 

Although  Yetta  listened  intently,  she  was  all  the 
time  thinking  not  so  much  of  Mrs.  Karner  as  of  what 
she  typified  —  the  unknown  life  of  the  man  she  loved, 
the  things  he  had  not  told  her. 

"Am  I  forgiven?"  he  asked,  kneeling  beside  her 
and  taking  her  hand. 

"Oh!  Forgiven!  That  isn't  it.  Who  am  I  to 
forgive  you  or  blame  you?  It's  that  I  don't  under 
stand.  And  when  I  don't  understand,  I'm  afraid." 

"You  mustn't  be  afraid  of  the  past,  darling." 

"I  don't  know  about  that.  When  it  comes  to  love, 
I  can't  think  of  any  past  or  present  or  future.  It's 
just  somehow  eternally  always  and  now  and  for  ever 
and  ever.  I'm  not  sure  we  can  get  away  from  the 
past.  I  can't  explain  it  very  well,  but  some  things  are 
real  and  some  aren't.  I  don't  think  I'll  ever  get  rid 
of  the  real  things  which  have  come  to  me.  They'll 
never  die." 

"Well,  don't  worry  about  Beatrice,  —  that  was  only 
an  interlude  —  not  'real.' " 

"And  Mabel?" 

"A  dream." 

"But  some  dreams  are  real,"  she  insisted. 

"No  dream  in  all  the  world,  Yetta,  is  real  like  your 
lips." 

She  wanted  so  much  to  be  kissed,  had  been  so  fright 
ened  for  a  moment,  that  she  sought  his  arms  without 
questioning  this  statement.  But  a  few  minutes  later 
the  thought  came  to  her  suddenly  that  he  had  kissed 
Beatrice  just  as  he  was  kissing  her.  He  felt  her  wince. 

"What's  the  matter?"  he  asked. 

"Oh,  I'm  dizzy.     Let  me  go  a  minute." 

She  got  up  and  stood  by  the  window.     She  was  doing 


THE  CRASH  333 

him  an  injustice.  He  had  never  kissed  Beatrice  as  he 
had  just  kissed  her.  But  women  seem  never  to  under 
stand  that  it  is  an  utter  impossibility  for  a  man  to 
caress  different  women  in  the  same  way.  Probably 
our  Father  Adam  and  Mother  Eve  are  the  only  couple 
the  Earth  has  seen  who  have  not  had  words  on  this 
subject.  If  Yetta  had  spoken  out  what  was  in  her 
mind,  Walter  also  would  have  taken  up  the  age-old 
argument  —  in  vain.  But  Yetta  did  not  speak.  She 
was  fighting  with  herself  —  striving  to  regain  her  self- 
control.  She  had  always  believed  that  j  ealousy  was  con 
temptible.  But  he  had  kissed  Mrs.  Karner  just  as  — 

" Still  thinking  of  Beatrice?"  he  asked  quietly. 

"  Trying  not  to,  Walter.  Oh,  Beloved,  you  must  be 
patient  with  me.  It  is  all  so  new  —  so  dizzyingly 
new.  I've  got  to  trust  you,  Walter.  I've  got  to  be 
lieve  every  word  you  say.  I  know  I  mustn't  have  doubts. 
I've  got  to  believe  every  word  you  say"  —  she  re 
peated  it  as  if  giving  herself  a  lesson  —  "and  I  do, 
Walter.  I  mustn't  ever  think  when  you  kiss  me  that 
perhaps  you'd  rather  kiss  some  one  else  —  and  I  won't." 

She  reached  out  her  arms  to  him,  and  blinded  by 
tears  she  stumbled  across  the  room  to  him. 

Walter  should  have  seized  this  moment  to  tell  her 
the  whole  truth.  There  is  one  very  strong  argument 
for  always  telling  the  truth.  It  is  so  desperately  hard 
to  know  which  moments  in  our  rapidly  moving  life 
are  such  as  to  make  a  lie  fatal. 

Most  of  us  believe  that  ultimately  truth  will  out. 
But  most  of  us  try  to  control  its  outings.  On  the  basis 
of  what  we  vaguely  call  "  worldly  wisdom,"  by  silences, 
by  false  emphasis  —  sometimes  by  frank  lies  —  we 
try  to  protect  our  friends  and  enemies  from  the  vision 


334  COMRADE  YETTA 

of  Truth  in  her  disturbing  nudity.  And  there  is 
hardly  one  of  us  who  would  not  give  his  right  hand 
if,  in  some  crisis  of  his  life,  he  had  only  had  sense 
enough  to  tell  the  whole  truth. 

There  were  very  real  obstacles  between  Walter  and 
his  desire.  Between  their  experiences  and  their  out 
looks  on  life  there  was  a  great  chasm.  But  his  best 
chance  was  to  face  things  frankly. 

Beatrice  was  only  an  incident.  Mabel  was  a  more 
important  matter.  But  still  he  could  have  made  out 
a  good  case  for  himself.  When  he  was  six  —  nearly 
seven  —  years  younger,  he  had  fallen  romantically  in 
love  with  her.  He  had  followed  that  love  with  a 
fidelity  which  promised  well  for  his  future  obligations. 
It  had  become  a  habit,  and  a  six  years'  habit  is  hard 
to  break.  He  had  come  to  the  realization  that  this 
blind  infatuation  was  leading  him  to  waste.  With  all 
the  manhood  he  could  muster  he  had  tried  to  break 
the  habit.  Sometimes  —  possibly  for  a  long  time  to 
come  —  the  nerve-cells  of  his  brain  would  fall  back 
into  the  old  ruts.  But  when  this  happened,  it  would 
be  only  the  ghost  of  a  dead  desire.  Even  the  ghost 
would  be  laid  in  time. 

He  could  have  told  her  that  the  very  sense  of  life 
which  throbbed  within  them  —  that  made  such  ques 
tions  seem  of  so  great  importance  —  laid  upon  them  in 
no  uncertain  terms  the  imperious  duty  of  the  future. 
He  had  no  Romeo-youth  to  offer  her.  Some  of  his 
hair  was  gray  beyond  dispute.  But  his  strong  and 
promising  manhood  was  worth  more  than  any  hot 
house  flowers  of  romance.  He  could  have  offered  her 
the  finest  of  all  comradeships,  the  communion  of  ideals, 
the  life  and  labor  shared  together. 


THE  CRASH  335 

Yetta  might  have  refused  such  an  offer,  refused  to 
make  any  compromise  with  the  love  she  dreamed  of. 
The  romantic  thing  is  to  demand  that  the  prince's 
armor  shall  be  as  spotless  as  on  the  day  he  first  rode 
out  to  seek  the  Grail.  And  Yetta  was  romantic.  But 
Walter,  with  his  larger  experience  with  life,  could  prob 
ably  have  convinced  her  of  the  patent  fact  that  most 
of  us  have  to  accept  much  more  meagre  terms  from  life 
than  he  offered.  The  ideal  love  is  woefully  rare,  but 
there  are  a  great  many  happy  marriages. 

Walter  did  not  recognize  this  as  one  of  the  moments 
which  demand  entire  frankness.  Why  should  he 
hurt  her  at  this  moment  with  another  ghost  story? 
Had  he  not  bruised  her  enough  for  one  afternoon  with 
Beatrice  ? 

Without  realizing  it,  his  attitude  toward  Yetta  had 
changed  subtly.  The  day  before  on  the  beach  he 
had  been  impressed  by  her  evident  love  for  him.  But 
the  girl  for  whom  he  had  been  sorry  had  changed  into 
the  woman  he  ardently  desired.  So  he  kissed  her 
tears  away  and  taught  her  to  smile  again. 

There  had  been  enough  left  from  the  lunch  purchases 
to  serve  their  appetites  for  supper.  They  sat  together 
in  the  window-seat  and  watched  the  twilight  fall  across 
the  Square.  All  that  was  tangled  in  life  straightened 
out  before  them,  the  future  seemed  a  sort  of  paradisaical 
boulevard.  In  the  days  which  were  to  come  they  were 
to  have  many  hours  of  such  sweet  communion,  hours 
when  they  locked  the  door  against  the  world  and 
talked  or  read  together.  And  there  were  to  be  days  of 
work.  They  were  neither  of  them  shirkers,  and  it  was 
to  be  hard  work.  But  whether  it  was  work  or  play 
the  sun  was  always  to  shine  upon  them,  for  there  were 


336  COMRADE  YETTA 

to  be  no  clouds  of  misunderstanding  or  discouragement. 
Side  by  side,  how  could  they  be  discouraged  ?  Walter 
was  getting  on  towards  forty,  but  all  this  seemed 
possible  to  him. 

At  last  they  turned  on  the  lights  so  Yetta  could  read 
to  him  some  verses  she  had  learned  to  love.  And  while 
they  were  still  striving  to  find  some  fitting  expression 
for  their  emotions  among  the  poets,  there  was  a  knock 
at  the  door,  and  Isadore  came  in.  Walter  greeted 
him  enthusiastically. 

"  Yetta,"  he  said,  "  shall  we  tell  him  the  great  news  ?" 

But  there  was  no  need  to  tell  him.  All  the  time  he 
had  been  shaking  hands  he  had  been  looking  over 
Walter's  shoulder  at  Yetta.  His  face  went  pale  and 
rigid.  He  stiffened  up  perceptibly. 

"I'm  glad/'  he  said  slowly,  looking  squarely  at 
Walter,  "if  you  can  make  her  happier  than  I  could. 
I  love  her,  too." 

The  words  seemed  to  Walter  like  a  challenge.  For  a 
second  or  two  their  eyes  met.  He  was  the  first  to  look 
away.  He  could  not  meet  the  younger  man's  directness. 

"Walter,"  Isadore  said,  "you're  my  best  friend.  Be 
good  to  her." 

He  hesitated  a  moment,  irresolute,  then  turned  ab 
ruptly  and  went  away.  Walter  stood  still  in  the  middle 
of  the  room  —  dazed  by  the  intensity  of  Isadore's 
emotions,  realizing  suddenly  how  many  more  of  the 
priceless  gifts  of  Youth  there  were  in  Isadore's  hands 
than  in  his  own.  The  shame  which  had  flooded  him 
at  Yetta's  first  caress  came  back.  Yetta,  in  her  in 
fatuation,  could  not  see  how  little  —  even  of  love  — 
he  had  to  offer.  She  was  too  blinded  to  choose  freely. 

"Yetta,"  he  said,  coming  over  and  sitting  on  the 


THE  CRASH  337 

other  end  of  the  window-seat  from  her,  "why  didn't 
you  tell  me  about  this  ?  " 

"Why,  Walter,  I  did  tell  you.  I  said  he  asked  me 
to  marry  him  —  two  years  ago." 

"But  I  didn't  realize  that  he  loved  you  as  much  as 
this." 

"Walter,"  she  said,  taking  fright  at  his  tone,  "I  never 
gave  him  any  encouragement.  I  never  — " 

"It  isn't  that,  Yetta,"  he  interrupted  her.  "Oh! 
I  don't  mean  that.  But  why  didn't  you  marry  him  ?" 

It  was  her  turn  to  be  dazed  and  bewildered.  She 
stood  up  before  him,  but  he  had  covered  his  face  with 
his  hands. 

"Why  ?     How  could  I  when  I  loved  you ?" 

"Loved  me?     Yetta,  you  hardly  knew  me." 

There  was  an  earthquake  in  Dreamland.  Just 
what  was  happening  in  his  soul  she  did  not  know,  but 
all  things  were  a-tremble. 

"Walter  ?    Walter  ?    What  do  you  mean  ? " 

He  looked  up  at  her  with  a  haggard  face. 

"Don't  you  understand  ? "  he  asked  seriously.  "I'm 
more  than  a  dozen  years  older  than  you  are,  close  to 
ten  years  older  than  Isadore.  Years  don't  always 
mean  much,  but  these  last  ones  have  been  very  long 
for  me. 

"Youth  counts  for  very  much  in  this  dreary  world 
of  ours.  It  means  undimmed  faith,  it  means  courage, 
it  means  vibrancy  and  reserve  power.  Isadore  has 
never  been  really  defeated,  Yetta,  and  I'm  a  mass  of 
poorly  healed  wounds.  The  best  of  me  is  gone,  some 
of  it  expended,  more  of  it  wasted.  I  come  to  you  like 
a  beggar,  asking  for  all  these  precious  things  —  faith, 
hope,  incentive.  My  hands  are  empty.  But  Isadore 


338  COMRADE  YETTA 

could  give  you  these  things,  when  you  need  them — 
as  you  surely  will  some  day,  Yetta.  If  I'd  been  here 
all  these  years,  you'd  have  seen  the  difference  between  us. 

"A  long  time  ago,  when  you  were  very  young,  I 
seemed  wonderful  to  you.  I  went  away  —  stop  and 
think  a  moment  how  very  little  you  know  of  me  - 
and  you  made  a  romance  about  me.  Romance  is  a 
very  dangerous  thing.  It's  a  sort  of  Lorelei  song, 
Yetta.  After  all,  our  business  is  to  push  on  down  the 
River,  not  to  stop  and  play  with  the  fairies  on  the 
rocks.  It's  a  real  world  we  must  live  in,  Yetta  dear, 
not  a  dream,  and  the  facts  must  be  faced.  Youth  is 
worth  more  than  anything  else.  Your  kisses  made 
me  forget  to  think  of  you  —  Isadore  reminded  me." 

"What  are  you  trying  to  do,  Walter?"  she  asked. 
"Don't  you  want  me  to  marry  you  ?" 

"I  want  you  to  be  happy,  Little  One." 

Once  more  he  buried  his  face  in  his  hands,  but  she 
knelt  before  him  and  pulled  his  hands  away. 

"Do  you  think  anything  in  all  the  world  could 
make  me  as  happy  as  your  love  ?" 

Suddenly  —  with  a  great  rush  of  weariness  —  he 
saw  clearly  the  gulf  between  them.  He  knew  from  his 
own  experience  what  thrilling  things  the  word  "love" 
may  mean.  And  he  could  no  longer  lay  claim  to  it. 

"What  do  you  mean  by  love?"  he  asked  drearily. 

Yetta  crumpled  up  in  a  heap  at  his  feet.  If  he  did 
not  know  what  "love"  meant,  the  Palace  of  Dreams 
was  indeed  crumbling. 

"Don't  you  know?"  she  whispered. 

The  clock  ticked  dolefully  while  she  waited  for  his 
answer. 

"Yes.     I'm  afraid  I  do  know  what  it  means  to  you, 


THE  CRASH  339 

Yetta.  And  I  haven't  got  that  to  give  you.  I  think 
love  means  romance  to  you.  That  is  what  Isadore 
and  Youth  have  to  offer.  I  had  it  once  —  years  ago  — 
enough  and  to  spare.  I  gave  it  all  away  —  where  it 
wasn't  wanted.  There  isn't  any  glitter  left. 

"I  came  to  you,  Yetta,  in  quest  of  this  very  thing  — 
which  I  have  lost.  I  can't  tell  you  how  beautiful, 
how  dazzling  you  look  to  my  tired  eyes  —  how  much 
to  be  desired  —  how  much  above  price  —  like  the 
Song  of  Songs.  And  being  selfish,  I  thought  only  of 
my  want,  of  my  hungry  loneliness.  I  did  not  remember 
—  till  Isadore  came  in  —  that  you  too  had  a  right  — 
a  much  better  right  than  my  desire  —  to  Youth. 

"It  would  not  be  honest,  Yetta,  to  accept  your  love, 
unless  I  made  quite  sure  that  you  know  me,  know 
what  you  are  doing,  the  choice  you  are  making  — 
stripped  of  romance,  in  its  cold  nakedness.  It  isn't  a 
choice,  Yetta,  between  me  and  Isadore.  It's  deeper 
than  that,  deeper  than  individuals.  I  must  see  that 
you  make  your  choice  with  clear  eyes.  If  you  want 
romance  —  the  grand  passion  —  well  —  I  haven't  that 
to  offer  you.  I  — " 

His  voice  trailed  off  into  silence.  Perhaps  he  was 
a  fool.  But  for  the  first  time  in  his  life  he  was  giving 
up  something  he  wanted,  something  he  could  have  for 
the  asking.  For  the  first  time  in  his  life  he  had  utterly 
cleansed  himself  of  selfishness.  It  was  a  momentous 
triumph  over  his  nature,  but  it  was  only  momentary. 
His  desire  for  the  girl  at  his  feet  came  over  him  with  a 
rush.  She  was  resting  her  head  against  the  ledge  of 
the  window-seat  and  —  her  clenched  fist  pressed 
against  her  lips  —  was  staring  at  the  black  shadows 
under  the  table. 


340  COMRADE  YETTA 

Perhaps  a  scrupulous  definition  forbade  the  use  of 
the  word  "love"  to  describe  his  emotion,  but  it  was 
none  the  less  strong.  The  last  twenty-four  hours  had 
been  wondrously  sweet  to  him.  There  was  a  grace  to 
her  clean,  fresh  youth,  a  charm  to  her  caresses,  her 
restrained  but  unhid  passion,  the  timidities  and  spon 
taneous  abandon  of  her  maidenhood,  which  had  en 
chanted  all  the  roots  of  his  being.  And  besides  and 
above  all  this  —  though  life  holds  little  better  than  such 
emotions  —  was  the  hope  that  with  her  he  might  get 
into  the  swing  of  activity,  the  ascending  curve  of  work 
and  purpose. 

"I'm  through  pleading  for  you,  Yetta.  Let  me 
plead  a  little  for  myself.  What  is  it  that  makes  me 
talk  to  you  like  this  ?  It's  not  romance.  Perhaps 
it  isn't  what  you  would  call  love.  But  I  would  call  it 
that.  It's  a  very  desperate  desire  to  forget  all  about 
myself  and  —  as  Isadore  said  —  'be  good  to  you.' 
Get  up,  darling,  and  sit  here  beside  me.  Let  us  talk 
over  again  all  our  plans  of  work.  After  all,  work  is 
more  important  than  romance." 

She  got  up  rather  unsteadily,  but  she  did  not  sit 
down  beside  him. 

"I  think  love  is  necessary,"  she  said. 

"Don't  let's  wreck  things  over  a  word,  Yetta. 
'Love'  means  so  many  things.  Tell  me  what  it  is  I 
feel  for  you.  What  is  it  that  makes  me  thrill  so  to 
your  kisses  ?  What  is  it  makes  me  want  you,  Yetta,  for 
all  time  and  always?  What  is  it  makes  me  know  I 
can  win  to  usefulness,  if  you  will  help  me?  What  is 
it  that  makes  me  risk  losing  what  I  want  most  in 
the  world,  for  fear  I  may  not  be  true  and  just  to 
you?  I  don't  care  what  name  you  give  it.  But 


THE  CRASH  341 

isn't  it  enough?  Let's  try  to  think  of  realities,  not 
words." 

"No.  It's  not  the  word  I  care  about/'  she  said. 
"But  the  reality  is  necessary.  I  love  you,  Walter,  and 
I'm  not  afraid  of  the  word.  You  know  what  it  means 
to  me  —  all  that  it  ever  meant  to  any  woman  —  and 
more.  It  means  thinking,  only  and  above  everything 
else  of  the  other  —  and  more  than  that.  It  means  giv 
ing  one's  self  without  any  'if's' —  and  more  than  that 
too.  I  can't  tell  you  what  love  is  —  just  because  the 
reality  is  so  much  bigger  than  any  words.  But  of 
one  thing  I  am  sure.  There  can't  be  any  regrets  in 
love.  Are  you  sorry  it  isn't  Mabel  who  loves  you  ? 
I  don't  care  about  the  past  any  more.  I  did  for  a 
minute  this  afternoon  —  because  it  surprised  me.  But 
I  love  you  too  much  to  care  about  the  past.  But,  oh  ! 
the  future,  Walter  ?  We  daren't  cheapen  that ! 
That's  all  there  is  left  to  us.  And  our  life  together  — 
our  future  —  couldn't  be  fine  if  you  had  regrets.  If 
ever  you  had  to  hide  things  from  me  and  had  wishes 
I  couldn't  share.  If  you  wished  sometimes  I  was 
some  one  else.  It's  very  simple,  Walter.  It's  this 
way.  If  Mabel  should  come  into  this  room  and  stand 
here  beside  me  and  say,  'I  love  you,'  as  I  say  it  — 
which  of  us  would  you  choose  ?" 

"She'll  never  come  into  the  room,  Yetta." 

"Oh,  Walter!  answer  me!  I  know  you  won't  lie. 
And  I'll  believe  you  for  ever  and  ever." 

And  so  he  could  not  lie.  He  buried  his  face  once 
more  in  his  hands.  He  did  not  look  up  when  he  heard 
the  rustle  of  her  skirts.  He  did  not  see  her  as  she 
picked  up  her  hat  and  stood  there,  the  tears  in  her 
eyes,  waiting  —  hoping  that  he  would  say  the  word. 


342  COMRADE  YETTA 

He  did  not  look  up  until  he  heard  the  door  close 
behind  her.  He  paced  the  room  aimlessly  for  several 
minutes,  then  filled  his  pipe  and,  turning  out  the  light, 
went  back  to  the  window-seat.  He  was  not  exactly 
suffering.  He  felt  himself  miserably  inert  and  dead. 

But  one  thing  he  saw  clearly  —  and  it  made  him 
glad.  Yetta's  romance  had  come  while  she  was  still 
young.  She  was  only  twenty-two.  Life  would  pick 
her  up  again.  It  might  be  Isadore,  it  might  be  some 
one  else.  But  her  pulse  was  too  strong  to  let  her  decay. 
There  are  many  real  joys  in  life  if  you  get  rid  of  ro 
mance  early  enough. 

Time  was  when  he  had  felt  as  she  did,  when  nothing 
but  the  best  seemed  worth  having.  He  saw  clearly 
that  what  he  could  have  given  her  would  not  have 
satisfied  her. 

Yetta  had  not  stopped  to  put  on  her  hat.  Her  eyes 
dimmed  with  tears,  she  had  stumbled  down  the  stairs 
and  out  across  the  street  into  the  Square,  towards 
home.  Then  she  remembered  that  it  was  early,  that 
her  room-mate  would  be  still  awake.  She  could  not  go 
home.  There  were  many  people  about,  some  stretched 
on  the  grass,  some  grouped  on  the  benches,  some 
strolling  about.  Many  noticed  the  hatless  girl  who 
shuffled  along  blindly.  And  presently  she  ran  into 
Isadore.  He  also  was  walking  about  aimlessly,  his 
head  bent,  his  hands  deep  in  his  pockets. 

"Good  God,  Yetta,"  he  cried  in  amazement,  " what's 
wrong?" 

She  raised  her  tear-wet  face  to  him,  stretching  out 
her  hand  towards  the  familiar  voice. 

"  We're  not  going  to  get  married,"  she  said. 

" Hadn't  you  better  let  me  take  you  home?" 


THE  CRASH  343 

"Sadie'll  be  up.  I  don't  want  to  go  home." 
"Well,  then,  come  over  here  and  sit  down." 
Hardly  knowing  what  she  did,  she  followed  him  to 

an  empty  bench.     Now,   Isadore  did  not  believe  in 

guardian  angels,  but  something  told  him  not  to  talk. 
"It's  like  this,"  Yetta  said,  feeling  that  some  further 

explanation  was  necessary,   "he's  still  in  love  with 

Mabel." 
And  Isadore  had  sense  enough  to  say  nothing  at  all. 

Yetta  turned  about  on  the  bench  and,  resting  her  head 

on  her  arms,  began  to  sob.     Half  the  night  through, 

Isadore  sat  beside  her  there  on  guard. 


BOOK  V 

CHAPTER  XXV 
ISADORE'S  MEDICINE 

SADIE  MICHELSON,  as  she  was  making  coffee  the  next 
morning,  was  cogitating  over  the  fact  that  she  had  not 
seen  her  new  room-mate  since  they  had  moved  into  the 
flat.  What  was  the  meaning  of  these  late  hours  ?  She 
was  convinced  that  this  Mr.  Longman,  whose  rooms 
Yetta  had  formerly  occupied  and  who  had  just  come 
back  to  claim  them,  had  something  to  do  with  it. 

Her  speculations  were  interrupted  by  the  telephone 
bell.  Yetta  also  heard  it  vaguely  in  her  uneasy  sleep 
and  dreamed  that  Walter  was  calling  her.  Sadie 
hurried  to  the  receiver.  She  hoped  to  find  a  clew  to  the 
mystery.  It  was  a  surprise  —  and  a  disappointment  — 
for  her  to  recognize  Isadore's  voice. 

"  Hello,  Sadie.     Is  Yetta  up  yet  ?" 

"No.     She  got  in  very  late  last  night  and  —  " 

"I  know,"  Isadore  interrupted.  "I  was  out  with 
her." 

This  was  a  new  disappointment.  Mr.  Longman  was 
not  to  blame  after  all. 

"Don't  wake  her,"  he  went  on.  "But  I  wish  you'd 
take  a  message  —  put  it  under  her  door,  where 

344 


ISADORE'S  MEDICINE  345 

she's  sure  to  see  it.  If  she  possibly  can,  it  would  be  a 
great  favor  if  she  could  help  us  down  here  this  morn 
ing.  We're  awfully  rushed.  Locke's  sick.  There's  a 
strike  over  in  Brooklyn  we've  got  to  cover.  And 
there's  nobody  here  to  do  it.  It  would  help  a  lot  if 
Yetta  could.  Got  that  straight  ?  —  All  right  —  much 
obliged." 

The  noise  of  Sadie's  leaving  woke  Yetta.  Her  first 
feeling  was  of  escape  from  some  dread  nightmare. 
Surely  last  night's  storm  had  been  a  tempest  in  the 
tea-pot.  Her  whole  concept  of  Walter  was  that  he 
was  all-powerful,  very  wise  and  resourceful.  Surely 
he  would  find  some  way  to  make  things  come  straight 
again. 

She  lay  still  a  few  minutes,  staring  up  at  the  un 
familiar  ceiling.  But  all  orderly  processes  of  the  mind 
were  difficult.  Her  recent  experiences  had  unloosed  a 
flood  of  tumultuous  feelings.  A  new  personality  had 
emerged  from  that  first  embrace  on  the  beach  at  Staten 
Island.  Something  had  died  within  her  at  his  kiss  — 
something  new  and  disturbingly  wonderful  had  been 
born  in  its  place.  For  a  moment,  forgetting  the  bitter 
reality,  she  let  herself  bathe  in  this  dizzying  sweet 
sensation.  The  hot  blood  rushed  to  her  cheeks,  but 
it  was  the  blush  of  exultation.  " Death"  and  "birth" 
did  not  seem  to  her  the  right  words  to  describe  the 
transformation.  It  was  more  of  a  blossoming,  as  when 
a  butterfly  outfolds  its  wings  from  a  chrysalis.  How 
wonderful  it  had  been  to  feel  his  arms  reaching  out  to 
her  !  How  much  more  wonderful  had  been  the  feeling 
of  reaching  out  to  him. 

The  memory  of  their  parting  fell  on  her  abruptly. 
It  had  all  been  a  hoax.  He  did  not  love  her.  And 


346  COMRADE  YETTA 

that  which  a  moment  before  had  seemed  so  wonderfully 
right,  now  smarted  as  a  shame.  The  butterfly  wings 
snapped.  She  could  find  no  tears.  She  looked  for 
ward,  in  dull  pain,  dry-eyed,  to  a  life  of  abject  crawling. 

There  was  the  inevitable  wave  of  bitterness.  What 
right  had  he  to  teach  her  flight  and  then  break  her 
wings  ?  But  this  mood  could  not  last.  She  loved  him. 
All  her  pride,  all  her  ideals  of  life  and  work  —  every 
thing  firm  —  deserted  her.  Nothing  mattered  any 
more  except  not  to  lose  him.  There  was  no  humilia 
tion,  through  which  she  would  not  crawl  to  regain  his 
companionship.  What  did  this  talk  of  Love  matter  ? 
She  wanted  to  be  with  him,  to  feel  his  arms  once  more 
about  her.  Her  whole  being  cried  out  that  she  was 
"his,"  utterly  "his."  Had  she  not  loved  him  since 
their  first  encounter  ?  She  would  go  to  him,  asking  no 
terms. 

In  the  rush  of  this  passionate  impulse,  she  jumped 
out  of  bed  —  and  saw  the  note  under  her  door.  The 
dream  came  back  to  her.  Walter  had  called  her. 
She  had  wasted  these  miserably  unhappy  moments  in 
bed,  and  all  the  while  his  message  had  been  waiting 
her! 

"Dear  Yetta.  Isadore  called  up  about  8.30  and 
asked  me  to  tell  —  " 

The  note  crumpled  up  in  Yetta's  hand.  And  there, 
alone  in  her  room,  with  no  one  to  see  her,  she  had  only 
one  idea.  She  must  not  make  a  scene. 

She  smoothed  out  the  note  and  went  through  the 
motions  of  reading  it.  Every  muscle  was  tense,  her 
teeth  were  gritted  in  the  supreme  effort  to  dominate 
the  storm  of  wild  impulses  within  her,  to  keep  her  head 
#bove  the  buffeting  waves  of  circumstance.  Mechani- 


ISADORE'S   MEDICINE  347 

cally  she  bathed  and  brushed  her  hair  and  dressed  her 
self.     Her  mind  was  rigid  —  clenched  like  her  teeth. 
But  subconsciously  —  behind  this  outward  calmness 

—  a  momentous  conflict  was  raging.     In  those  few 
minutes,  alone  in  her  strange  new  quarters,  with  no 
one  by  to  help  or  encourage  her,  she  faced  the  fight 
and   won.     She   did   not  win    through   unscathed,  — 
modern  psychology  is  teaching  us  that  no  one  does 
come  through  such  conflicts   without  wounds,  which 
heal  slowly,  if  at  all. 

In  the  din  of  the  spiritual  fray  a  new  outlook  on  life 
had  come  to  her.  It  was  not  so  sharp  a  change  as  that 
which  Walter's  caresses  had  caused,  but  it  was  more 
fundamental  —  in  the  way  that  spiritual  matters  are 
always  more  significant  than  things  physical. 

Life  as  she  had  seen  it  was  a  ceaseless,  desperate 
struggle,  a  constant  clash  of  personalities,  an  unre 
lenting  war  of  social  classes.  In  an  external,  rather 
mechanical  way  she  had  been  involved  in  this  struggle. 
She  looked  forward  to  being  "a  striker"  all  her  life. 
But  she  had  always  thought  of  herself  as  a  part  of 
the  conflict.  Now  —  and  this  was  the  new  viewpoint 

—  it  seemed  that  the  fight  was  taking  place  within  her. 
The  strategic  position,  the  key  to  the  whole  battle 
field,  the  place  where  the  fiercest  blows  were  to  be  ex 
changed,  was  her  own  soul.     If  she  was  defeated  there, 
the  fight  was  over  —  as  far  as  she  was  concerned. 

It  was  not  to  be  until  years  afterwards  that  she  came 
to  a  full  understanding  of  what  that  half-hour  had 
meant  to  her.  It  was  to  take  many  months  before  she 
could  arrange  her  life  in  accord  with  this  new  outlook. 
But  as  she  poured  out  the  coffee,  which  Sadie  had  left 
on  the  back  of  the  stove,  she  knew  that  she  had  won 


348  COMRADE  YETTA 

this  first  fight  in  the  new  campaign.  For  the  moment, 
at  least,  she  was  the  Captain  of  Her  Soul. 

In  the  overwhelming  sadness  of  victory,  in  the  poig 
nant  wistfulness  of  triumph,  she  had  regained  her 
pride.  She  was  not  going  to  humiliate  herself  to  gain 
the  narcotic  pleasure  of  kisses  when  she  wanted  love. 
Walter  would  come  to  her  or  he  would  not.  That  was 
for  him  to  decide.  In  either  case  the  battle  of  life 
was  still  to  be  fought.  She  must  not  desert. 

It  was  half  past  nine,  and  no  word  from  Walter. 
She  could  not  sit  there  idly,  waiting  for  him  to  change 
his  mood.  To  escape  from  the  pain  of  uncertainty 
she  reread  Isadore's  message  —  understandingly. 
Here  was  the  day's  work  concretely  before  her.  She 
put  on  her  hat. 

Out  on  Waverly  Place  she  suddenly  realized  that  her 
feet  were  carrying  her  to  Washington  Square  and 
Walter.  The  Enemy  made  a  desperate  assault  — 
surprised  her  with  her  visor  up,  her  sword  in  its  sheath, 
her  shield  hanging  useless  on  her  back.  Why  not  ? 
He  would  not  have  the  heart  to  send  her  away.  She 
knew  his  kindliness.  If  they  were  together,  he  would 
grow  to  love  her.  How  could  she  expect  him  to  change 
while  they  were  apart  ?  Together  all  would  go  well  — 

She  had  thought  that  the  struggle  of  a  few  minutes  be 
fore  had  been  final  —  and  here  it  was  all  to  do  over  again. 

A  white-haired  old  man  was  walking  towards  her, 
but  she  did  not  notice  him  until  he  stopped  and  spoke. 

"Are  you  sick,  Miss?" 

"No"  — she  shivered  as  she  realized  the  import  of 
what  he  had  said,  how  much  worse  it  was  than  he  sus 
pected  —  "Oh,  no  !  I'm  not  sick." 

But  the  old  man  stood  still  watching  her  as  she  turned 


ISADORE'S  MEDICINE  349 

down  McDougal  Street.  He  was  half  inclined  to  call 
a  doctor.  Soon  Yetta  realized  that  she  had  reached 
Bleecker  Street.  She  turned  across  town  to  the  Subway 
and  so  down  to  Newspaper  Row  and  The  Clarion  office. 

It  bore  no  resemblance  to  that  of  The  Star.  The 
loft  of  a  warehouse  had  been  cut  in  two  by  a  flimsy 
partition.  In  the  back  was  a  battery  of  second-hand, 
old-style  linotypes,  a  couple  of  type-frames  for  the 
advertisement  and  job  work,  the  make-up  slab,  the 
proof  tables,  and  the  stereotyping  outfit.  The  stairway 
opened  into  this  noisy,  crowded  room.  Yetta  had  to 
walk  carefully  between  the  machines  to  reach  the  edi 
torial  room  beyond  the  partition. 

A  low  railing  divided  the  front  room  between  the 
" editorial"  and  " business"  departments.  To  the 
right  was  a  long  reporters'  table,  smaller  ones  for  the 
"City"  and  " Exchange"  editors,  and  a  roll-top  desk 
beyond  for  Isadore. 

Levine,  a  youngster  with  very  curly  black  hair,  a 
wilted  collar,  and  soaked  shirt,  jumped  up  to  greet 
Yetta. 

"Hello,"  he  shouted  above  the  din  of  the  typewriters 
and  machines.  "Here's  a  note  from  Isadore.  He's 
out  trying  to  raise  money.  I  hope  to  God  you  can 
help  us.  Locke's  sick.  I'm  running  his  desk  and 
mine  and  Isadore's  this  morning.  Harry's  covering  the 
Party  News  and  Woman's  Page  besides  his  Telegraph 
and  Exchanges,  so  that  Sam  can  cover  the  State  Con 
vention.  How  in  hell  they  expect  us  to  get  out  a  paper 
so  short-handed  is  — " 

"Oh,  stop  your  croaking,"  Harry  Moore  yelled  from 
his  table,  hardly  looking  up  from  a  pile  of  Labor  Papers 
he  was  clipping.  "Things  are  no  worse  than  usual. 


350  COMRADE  YETTA 

We'll  get  her  out  somehow.  We  always  do.  God's 
good  to  drunks  and  fools  and  Socialists." 

One  of  the  bookkeepers,  from  the  " business"  side  of 
the  railing,  overhearing  this  " editorial"  controversy, 
began  to  count  at  the  top  of  his  voice. 

"One!     Two!    Three!" 

At  " Three"  every  one  in  the  room,  except  Yetta  and 
Levine,  chanted  in  unison:  — 

"O-o-oh  !     Cut  it  out  and  work  for  Socialism  !" 

"  You  make  me  tired,"  Levine  growled  back  at  them, 
and  sat  down  at  his  table  with  a  despairing  gesture. 

Isadore's  note  told  Yetta  that  a  small  but  desperate 
strike  had  broken  out  among  some  paper-box  factories 
in  an  out-of-the-way  corner  of  Brooklyn.  The  workers 
were  recently  arrived  immigrants  who  spoke  no  English. 
The  regular  papers  had  not  mentioned  the  strike,  and 
under  cover  of  this  secrecy,  the  bosses,  who  were  allied 
with  prominent  Kings  County  politicians,  were  having 
everything  their  own  way.  He  thought  there  was  a 
big  story  in  it.  The  publicity  would  certainly  help 
the  strikers.  There  was  no  one  in  the  office  to  cover  it. 

Not  a  word  of  their  last  night's  encounter. 

" Comrade,"  Yetta  asked  Levine,  "what  time  do 
you  go  to  press?" 

"One  o'clock.  Copy  must  be  in  by  twelve- thirty. 
It's  idiotic  !  Our  Final  Edition  is  on  the  streets  before 
the  regular  papers  lock  up  for  their  Home  Edition. 
We  can't  get  out  a  decent  sheet  in  such  — " 

"One!    Two!    Three!." 

"O-o-oh  !     Cut  it  out  and  work  for  Socialism  !" 

"They're  fools!" 

"Well,"  Yetta  said,  smiling  for  the  first  time  that 
day,  "I'll  call  you  up  about  noon.  Put  a  stenographer 


ISADORE'S   MEDICINE  351 

on  the  wire.  That'll  give  you  an  opener  for  to-day. 
I'll  have  the  whole  story  for  a  follow-up  to-morrow. 
So  long." 

About  the  time  that  Yetta  was  starting  off  on  this 
assignment,  Isadore  came  into  the  office  of  the  Woman's 
Trade  Union  League. 

" Hello,"  Mabel  greeted  him.  Then,  as  a  second 
thought,  and  somewhat  less  cordially,  she  added, 
"  Stranger." 

She  was  not  in  a  happy  mood.  Of  late  she  had  felt 
her  grip  on  life  weakening.  People  upon  whom  she 
depended  were  deserting  her.  It  had  begun  when 
Isadore  had  given  up  his  work  for  the  League  to  start 
The  Clarion.  When  a  new  lawyer  had  been  broken  in, 
Mrs.  Karner  had  left.  It  had  been  impossible  to  re 
place  her.  The  Advisory  Council  was  doubly  hard 
to  manage  without  her.  There  had  been  other  deser 
tions.  Isadore  seemed  to  have  started  a  stampede. 
And  Mabel  did  not  feel  these  days  the  same  buoyancy 
in  meeting  such  emergencies.  Her  few  gray  hairs  she 
was  still  able  to  hide,  but  there  was  no  getting  away 
from  the  tired  look  about  her  eyes.  Her  sudden  irrita 
bilities  frightened  her.  She  was  haunted  by  the  idea 
that  she  was  getting  "  crabbed." 

Isadore  pulled  up  a  chair  and  broke  at  once  into  his 
business.  He  wanted  Mabel  to  persuade  Yetta  to 
take  up  some  regular  work  on  The  Clarion.  Yetta  had 
a  talent  for  writing  which  ought  not  to  be  wasted.  He 
would  give  them  a  column  or  so  daily  for  their  work  of 
organizing  women.  "It  would  be  helpful  all  round," 
he  said.  "Publicity  for  you.  If  it  looks  good  to  you, 
put  it  up  to  Yetta." 

"It  doesn't  look  good  to  me,"  Mabel  said  decisively. 


352  COMRADE  YETTA 

"You  forget  I'm  not  interested  in  your  crazy  little 
paper.  What  good  is  publicity  to  us  among  the  couple  of 
thousand  hidebound  Socialists  who  buy  The  Clarion?" 

"Our  circulation  is  over  ten  thousand." 

"Pooh!  Nobody  but  party  members  read  it. 
Most  of  your  circulation  is  given  away  —  and  thrown 
into  the  gutter.  You  think  working-men  ought  to  read 
a  Socialist  paper.  But  they  don't.  They  prefer  a 
real  paper  with  news  in  it  and  pictures  and  a  funny 
page.  Yetta  was  a  fool  to  give  up  her  work  on  The 
Star.  That  was  real  publicity. 

"You  want  to  get  Yetta  on  The  Clarion.  You 
surely  do  need  somebody  who  knows  how  to  write  ! 
You  want  her  to  drift  away  from  the  real  work  of  organ 
ization  —  just  as  you  did.  I  see  through  your  mutual 
benefit  talk.  Instead  of  helping  our  work,  you  want  to 
get  her  away  from  us.  Well,  the  less  she  gets  mixed 
up  with  The  Clarion  and  your  little  closed  circle  of 
dogmatists,  the  better  I'll  be  pleased." 

"Come  to  think  of  it,"  Isadore  said,  changing  his 
tactics,  "I  would  like  to  see  Yetta  give  all  her  time  to 
The  Clarion.  As  you  say,  we  surely  do  need  good 
writers.  But  that  wasn't  in  my  mind  when  I  came  in. 

"I'm  worried  about  Yetta.  She  needs  to  be  kept 
busy  —  busier  than  she  is.  Of  course  I  wouldn't  want 
her  to  know  I  was  butting  in  like  this.  But  she's 
worrying  about  something  — " 

Mabel,  her  mind  made  up  to  be  disagreeable,  inter 
rupted  him. 

"I  knew  it  wasn't  interest  in  the  League  that  brought 
you  here.  I  owe  this  visit  to  your  solicitude  about 
Yetta." 

"That's    not    just,    either,    Mabel  —  although    it's 


ISADORE'S   MEDICINE  353 

nearer  right  than  your  first  guess.  Yetta' s  principal 
work  is  with  the  League.  It's  natural  I  should  come 
to  you.  I  am  really  worried  about  her.  Something's 
troubling  her." 

" What's  the  matter?" 

"I  don't  know."  Isadore  was  surprised  at  the  ease 
with  which  he  lied.  "You  don't  have  to  know  what's 
wrong  to  see  that  things  aren't  right.  You'd  have 
noticed  it,  too,  if  you  had  not  been  seeing  her  every  day. 
But  I  haven't  seen  her  for  a  long  time"  — he  expanded 
his  lie.  "She  came  into  my  office  this  morning  and  it 
scared  me.  This  Svhat's-the-use' look.  She's  moody, 
sad.  Going  through  some  sort  of  a  crisis.  We  all 
have  them.  Times  when  we  wonder  what  God  had 
against  us  when  He  made  us,  and  all  that.  The  only 
thing  that  helps  is  work. 

"Yetta  isn't  doing  much  more  for  you  than  when 
she  was  studying  or  working  on  The  Star.  I  guess 
it's  the  empty  mornings  that  cause  the  trouble.  Really, 
the  way  she  looked  startled  me.  I  was  coming  uptown, 
anyway,  and  I  decided  to  drop  in  and  put  it  up  to  you. 
I  really  think  the  work  I  suggested  —  which  would  fill 
up  her  mornings  —  would  help  you  fully  as  much  as  us." 

Mabel  bit  the  end  of  her  pencil  and  looked  out  at 
the  street.  She  was  sure  that  Isadore  had  not  told  her 
all  he  knew.  Probably  Yetta  had  found  Walter  in 
different  and  was  cut  up  over  that.  She  would  find 
out  in  the  evening  when  Walter  called  on  her.  Perhaps 
more  work  would  be  good  for  Yetta.  Not  the  job 
Isadore  suggested.  She  had  a  decided  hostility  to 
him  and  this  wild  newspaper  fad  which  had  taken  him 
away  from  "really  useful  work." 

"You  may  be  right  about  Yetta,"  she  said,  trying  to 

2A 


354  COMRADE  YETTA 

soften  her  ill-humor.  "I  haven't  seen  any  signs  of  a 
soul  tragedy.  But  if  she  needs  more  work,  I  can  give 
her  more  than  she  can  handle  right  here  —  without 
urging  her  to  waste  time  on  your  hobby." 

"Your  hobby  or  mine,"  Isadore  said,  getting  up. 
"I  don't  care  much  which.  My  idea  in  coming  was  to 
see  that  Yetta  was  kept  busy.  And  I  think  you'll 
see  I  was  right  about  it.  So  long." 

He  was  really  glad  that  things  had  taken  this  turn. 
The  impersonal,  Socialist  side  of  him  would  have 
rejoiced  in  winning  Yetta's  support  for  The  Clarion. 
But  he  knew  that  in  a  personal  way  it  would  have  been 
harder  to  have  her  always  about.  The  sharpest  pain 
in  Cupid's  quiver  is  to  watch  the  one  you  love  break 
heart  for  some  one  else. 

From  the  League  Isadore  went  in  search  of  Wilhelm 
Stringer,  the  " organizer"  of  the  " branch"  of  the 
Socialist  local  to  which  Yetta  belonged.  For  near 
forty  years,  Stringer  had  earned  what  money  he  needed 
as  a  brass  polisher.  But  his  real  job  was  Socialism. 
He  had  long  been  a  widower,  his  own  children  had  died 
in  infancy  and  his  cheated  paternal  instinct  had  found 
an  outlet  in  quiet,  intense  love  for  the  "  young  Com 
rades."  He  was  a  kindly  "Father  Superior"  to  the 
whole  city  organization. 

Isadore  found  him  eating  his  lunch  on  the  sidewalk, 
in  the  shade  of  the  factory.  They  were  old  friends  and 
could  talk  without  evasions. 

"Bill,"  Isadore  said,  "this  is  a  personal  matter. 
It's  just  by  chance  I  know  about  it.  Comrade  Yetta 
Ray ef sky  is  up  against  it.  You  can  guess  the  trouble 
as  well  as  I  could  tell  you.  What  she  needs  is  to  be  kept 
so  busy  that  she'll  forget  it.  She's  in  your  branch. 


ISADORE'S  MEDICINE  355 

There  must  be  some  work  which  isn't  being  done  that 
you  could  unload  on  her.  Work's  the  best  medicine 
for  her." 

Very  slowly  Stringer  chewed  up  his  mouthful  of 
cheese  sandwich. 

"Veil.  Ve  must  send  a  delegate  to  der  komitat  von 
education.  Nowadays  they  meet  three  times  a  veek. 
That  vill  be  a  start.  Und  alzo  ve  commence  soon  mit 
the  hauz  to  hauz  mit  tracts  —  for  the  campaign.  That 
is  much  vork.  Poor  leetle  girl.  I  guess  ve  can  most 
kill  her.  Vork  is  gut  medicine." 

And  Isadore,  having  stolen  half  a  morning  from  his 
regular  work,  rushed  downtown  to  the  office. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

THE  CLARION 

YETTA  found  the  strike  of  the  paper-box  makers  more 
serious  than  she  had  expected.  The  conditions  of  the 
trade  were  appalling.  The  half  dozen  factories  were 
only  the  centre  of  a  widespread  sweating  system. 
More  than  half  of  the  work  was  done  in  the  tenements 
of  the  districts  where  the  Child  Labor  Law  could  be 
evaded  and  where  women  could  be  driven  to  work 
incredibly  long  hours  beyond  the  reach  of  the  Factory 
Inspectors. 

The  strikers  were  not  only  isolated  —  lost  in  a  back 
water  district  of  Brooklyn,  out  of  touch  with  labor 
organizations,  ignorant  of  the  laws  and  of  their  rights 
-  they  were  also  weakened  by  the  division  of  lan 
guages.  •  All  were  " greenhorn"  immigrants,  who  had 
not  yet  learned  English.  They  belonged  to  diverse  and 
hostile  races  —  a  disunited  medley  of  Slovaks,  Poles, 
Italians,  and  Jews.  The  bosses  have  been  quick  to 
discover  how  serious  an  impediment  to  organization  is 
a  mixture  of  races. 

Yetta  came  to  them  in  the  same  way  that  Mabel, 
three  and  a  half  years  before,  had  come  to  the  striking 
vest-makers  —  bringing  detailed,  practical  knowledge 
of  how  to  manage  a  strike.  As  soon  as  she  had  tele- 

356 


THE  CLARION  357 

phoned  in  a  first  story  to  The  Clarion,  she  took  up  the 
work  of  bringing  order  and  hope  into  the  despairing 
chaos  of  the  struggle.  She  called  on  the  police  captain, 
and  her  threat  of  publicity  made  him  change  his  mind 
in  regard  to  the  right  of  the  strikers  to  hold  meetings. 
Before  supper-time  the  effect  of  the  Clarion  story  was 
evident.  Half  a  dozen  labor  organizers  and  Socialist 
speakers  turned  up.  With  this  outside  help  the  paper- 
box  makers  were  able  to  organize  their  picket,  arrange 
meetings,  and  start  plans  for  money-raising.  A  Social 
ist  lawyer  took  up  the  cases  of  the  dozen  odd  strikers 
who  had  been  arrested. 

By  ten  o'clock  the  situation  was  immensely  improved. 
Yetta  escaped  to  a  typewriter  to  get  out  her  big  "  follow- 
up"  for  the  next  day's  paper.  She  went  at  it  with  a 
peculiar  thrill.  She  was  realizing  for  the  first  time  what 
a  power  in  the  fight  a  working-man's  paper  might  be. 

While  she  was  working  out  her  story,  the  semi-annual 
stockholders'  meeting  of  the  Cooperative  Newspaper 
Publishing  Company  was  called  to  order  in  one  of  the 
halls  of  the  Labor  Temple  on  East  Eighty-fourth 
Street. 

Walter  had  spoken  of  The  Clarion  as  "Isadore's 
paper."  In  reality  it  was  a  cooperative  enterprise. 
In  the  days  when  the  working-men  nearly  elected  Henry 
George  as  Mayor  of  New  York,  they  had  started  to  raise 
money  to  found  a  newspaper  which  would  represent 
the  interests  of  their  class.  It  was  decided  that  fifty 
thousand  dollars  was  necessary,  and  a  committee  had 
been  formed.  In  the  first  enthusiasm  they  had  col 
lected  five  thousand.  Fresh  efforts  had  been  made 
intermittently,  and  the  sum  had  grown  to  eight  thou 
sand. 


358  COMRADE  YETTA 

When  Isadore  had  returned  from  his  vacation  with 
the  Pauldings,  he  had  decided  to  centre  his  efforts  on 
this  project.  He  had  studied  the  ways  and  means  care 
fully,  he  had  infused  new  life  into  the  committee,  and 
at  last  he  had  succeeded  in  organizing  this  cooperative 
publishing  company.  At  their  first  meeting  they  had 
decided  that  fifty  thousand  was  hopeless,  and  that  they 
could  begin  with  twenty-five.  But  after  straining 
every  nerve  for  six  months,  arranging  balls  and  picnics 
and  fairs,  they  had  raised  only  twelve  thousand.  The 
Clarion  was  started  on  that  amount.  Every  one  who 
knew  anything  about  modern  journalism  told  Isadore 
he  was  a  fool. 

At  first  the  paper  ran  on  its  capital.  But  after  a 
few  months  the  income  from  circulation,  advertise 
ments,  and  job-printing  reduced  the  weekly  deficit  to 
about  five  hundred  dollars.  This  was  met  in  part  by 
the  Maintenance  Pledge  Fund.  About  two  thousand 
people,  mostly  members  of  the  Socialist  party,  had 
pledged  weekly  contributions  ranging  from  ten  cents  to 
a  few  dollars.  The  remaining  deficit  was  met  by  pure 
and  simple  begging  and  by  rebates  from  the  wages. 
Never  was  a  paper  run  on  a  more  strenuous  and  flimsy 
basis.  The  lack  of  economy  of  such  poverty-stricken 
operation  would  have  shocked  any  business  man, 
would  have  caused  apoplexy  to  an  "  efficiency  expert. " 
The  cost  of  every  process  was  twice  or  thrice  what  it 
would  have  been  if  they  had  had  more  money. 

But  financial  worries  were  only  a  small  part  of  what 
Isadore  and  his  little  band  of  enthusiastic  helpers  had 
to  contend  with.  The  Clarion  was  the  property  of  the 
democratically  organized  shareholders,  who  elected  an 
Executive  Committee  of  five  to  manage  it.  Of  all 


THE  CLARION  359 

phases  of  public  life,  Democracy  has  shown  itself 
least  prepared  to  deal  sanely  with  this  business  of 
newspapers.  As  a  whole  the  stockholders  of  the  com 
pany  were  deeply  dissatisfied  with  the  regular  news 
papers  and  ardently  desired  one  which  would  truly 
represent  their  class.  But  although  they  were  making 
great  sacrifices,  were  putting  up  an  amazingly  large 
share  of  their  earnings  to  support  The  Clarion,  their 
idea  of  what  to  expect  from  it  was  very  vague.  They 
knew  nothing  at  all  of  the  technical  problems  of 
journalism. 

The  Executive  Committee  had  stated  meetings  every 
week,  and  seemed  to  Isadore  to  be  holding  special 
meetings  every  ten  minutes.  More  of  his  time  went 
to  educating  this  board  of  managers,  teaching  them 
what  could  and  what  could  not  be  done  with  their 
limited  resources,  than  in  actual  work  on  the  paper. 

When  the  meeting  of  the  shareholders  had  been 
called  to  order,  Rheinhardt,  the  chairman  of  the 
Executive  Committee,  read  his  report.  The  circula 
tion  had  reached  twelve  thousand.  The  weekly  deficit 
had  been  reduced  to  $400.  The  Maintenance  Pledge 
Fund  had  brought  in  $310.  Gifts  to  the  amount 
of  $66.50  had  been  received.  The  office  force  had 
receipted  for  $23. 50  which  they  had  not  received.  For 
the  first  time  in  the  history  of  The  Clarion  a  week 
had  passed  without  increasing  the  indebtedness. 

Then  the  meeting  fell  into  its  regular  routine  of 
useless  criticism.  One  desperately  earnest  Socialist 
vehemently  objected  to  some  of  the  advertisements 
which,  he  said,  favored  capitalistic  enterprise.  He  was 
immediately  followed  by  another  Comrade  who  accused 
the  advertising  force  of  rank  inefficiency  in  not  securing 


360  COMRADE  YETTA 

more  of  it.  A  third  speaker  said  it  was  foolish  to  waste 
space  on  sporting  news.  The  working-class  had  more 
serious  things  to  think  about.  Three  or  four  others  at 
once  clamored  for  the  floor.  They  all  told  the  same 
story:  the  men  in  their  shops  bought  the  papers  to  see 
how  the  Giants  were  coming  along  in  the  race  for  the 
baseball  pennant.  They  would  not  buy  The  Clarion 
because  its  athletic  news  was  weak.  So  it  went  on  as 
usual  —  every  suggestion  was  combated  by  a  counter 
proposal  —  and  so  it  would  have  gone  on  till  adjourn 
ment,  if  one  of  the  Executive  Committee  had  not  lost 
heart  in  the  face  of  this  futile  criticism  and  resigned. 

Wilhelm  Stringer  jumped  up. 

"Ve  haf  in  our  branch  a  comrade  who  is  one  gut 
newspaper  lady.  She  has  vorked  mit  a  big  yellow 
journal.  I  like  to  see  gut  Socialist  on  the  komitat,  but 
alzo  ve  need  some  gut  newspaper  man.  Und  I  nomi 
nate  Comrade  Yetta  Rayefsky." 

No  one  sought  the  nomination,  for  it  was  a  hard  and 
thankless  job,  so  Yetta  was  elected  by  acclamation. 

"Ve  vill  nearly  kill  her  mit  vork.  Yes?"  Stringer 
said  to  Isadore  as  the  meeting  broke  up. 

"Do  you  think  she'll  accept?"  Isadore  asked  dubi 
ously. 

"Sure,  she  vill.  It  is  a  gut  girl.  I  haf  not  as  yet 
asked  her,  but  now  I  vill  write  a  letter  und  tell  her." 

He  gave  the  note  to  Isadore  to  deliver. 

Yetta  finished  her  copy  about  midnight,  but  finding 
much  detail  still  needing  attention  at  the  strike  head 
quarters,  she  decided  to  make  a  night  of  it  and  sleep  in 
Brooklyn  with  a  family  of  strikers.  It  was  three  in 
the  morning  before  she  turned  in  —  too  tired  to  remem 
ber  with  any  clearness  that  her  butterfly  wings  had  been 


THE  CLARION  361 

broken.  More  than  once  during  the  day  she  had  had 
to  fight  against  her  tears  —  to  struggle  against  the  desire 
.to  drop  all  this  work  and  rush  back  to  Manhattan  and 
Walter.  But  always  at  the  weak  moment  some  one 
who  was  weaker  had  asked  her  help. 

It  all  had  to  be  fought  out  again  when  she  woke. 
She  might  not  have  won,  if  the  conviction  had  not 
come  to  her  during  her  sleep  that  somehow  it  must 
all  turn  out  right  in  the  end.  When  she  reached  "  head 
quarters"  she  found  so  much  to  do  that  she  had  no  time 
to  mourn.  The  first  mail  brought  in  more  than  fifty 
dollars  —  the  result  of  her  yesterday's  story.  But 
better  still  was  the  fact  that  The  Clarion's  glaring 
headlines  had  forced  the  attention  of  the  regular  papers. 
The  strike  was  receiving  wide  publicity.  There  is  no 
other  class  of  evil-doers  who  so  ardently  love  darkness 
in  their  business  as  " unfair"  employers.  The  bosses 
had  not  been  much  worried  by  the  revolt  of  their 
workers,  but  they  did  not  like  to  read  about  it  —  to 
have  their  acquaintances  read  about  it  —  in  their 
morning  papers. 

It  was  ten  o'clock  before  Yetta  could  get  away. 
Coming  across  on  the  elevated,  she  had  her  first  chance 
to  look  at  the  yesterday's  issue  of  The  Clarion.  It 
caused  a  revulsion  from  her  feeling  of  enthusiasm  over 
a  working-man's  paper.  What  a  pitiful  sheet  it  was  ! 
How  different  in  tone  and  quality  from  the  one  Walter 
had  talked  of  so  glowingly  !  It  was  not  only  unat 
tractive  in  appearance.  There  was  not  a  detail  which, 
to  Yetta' s  trained  eye,  seemed  well  done.  The  head 
lines  of  her  own  story,  which  spread  across  the  top  of 
the  front  page,  were  crude.  A  dozen  better  ones  sug 
gested  themselves  to  her.  The  mistakes  they  had  made 


362  COMRADE  YETTA 

in  expanding  her  telephone  message  to  two  columns 
were  ludicrous  and  vexatious.  What  else  was  there  in 
the  paper  ?  The  rest  of  the  front  page  was  filled  with 
telegrams  which  had  been  news  several  hours  before 
it  had  gone  to  press  !  The  second  page  —  it  was  headed 
" Labor  News"  —  offended  Yetta  especially.  It  was 
mostly  " exchange  paragraphs"  clipped  from  trade 
journals.  The  original  matter  was  written  by  some  one 
who  did  not  understand  nor  sympathize  with  the  Trade- 
Union  Movement,  who  evidently  thought  that  every 
worker  who  was  not  a  party  member  was  mentally 
defective.  The  only  spark  of  personality  on  the  last 
page  was  Isadore's  editorial.  It  was  a  bit  ponderous 
and  long-drawn-out,  but  at  least  it  was  intense  and 
thoughtful.  The  cartoon  was  poorly  drawn  and  re 
quired  an  analytic  mind  to  discover  the  point.  Yetta 
found  it  hard  to  believe  that  twelve  thousand  people 
had  been  willing  to  buy  so  uninteresting  a  paper  when 
they  could  get  the  bright,  snappy,  sixteen-page  Star 
for  the  same  money. 

She  was  tired  and  discouraged  when  she  reached  the 
office. 

"I'm  not  a  headline  writer,"  she  said  as  she  tossed 
her  copy  on  Le vine's  table,  "but  I've  ground  out  some 
that  aren't  quite  so  stupid  as  those  you  ran  yesterday." 

Without  waiting  for  his  retort  she  went  on  to  Isa- 
dore's  desk. 

" Here's  a  note  from  Stringer,"  he  said  as  a  greeting. 

She  tore  it  open  listlessly. 

"Well !  That's  a  nervy  piece  of  business,"  she  said, 
throwing  it  into  the  waste-paper  basket.  "Electing 
me  without  asking  my  consent." 

"Won't  you  serve?" 


THE  CLARION  363 

"No." 

Isadore  leaned  back  in  his  swivel  chair  and  puffed 
nervously  at  his  cigarette. 

" Don't  you  think  the  job's  worth  doing?" 

"It's  worth  doing  well  —  but  not  like  this." 

It  seemed  to  Isadore  that  a  word  of  encouragement 
from  her  would  have  put  new  life  into  him.  But  she  — 
like  everybody  else  —  had  only  criticism.  He  had  a 
foolish  desire  to  cry  and  an  equally  insane  desire  to 
curse.  He  managed  to  do  neither. 

"Well,  what  would  you  suggest?  To  bring  it  up 
to  your  standard  of  worth-while-ness?" 

"It'll  never  be  a  newspaper  till  the  front  page  gets 
over  this  day-bef ore-yesterday  look  —  for  one  thing." 

"If  you  knew  what  we're  up  against,"  he  said,  labori 
ously  trying  to  hide  the  sting  her  scorn  gave  him,  "I 
think  you'd  be  proud  of  our  news  department  —  as 
proud  as  I  am.  In  the  first  place,  of  course,  we  have  to 
subscribe  to  the  very  cheapest  News  Agency.  Until 
we  can  afford  some  more  delivery  wagons  —  we've 
only  got  two  now  —  we'll  have  to  go  to  press  by  one. 
That  means  that  the  telegraphic  copy  must  be  in  at 
twelve-thirty.  The  flimsies  don't  begin  to  come  in  till 
eleven.  We  can  receive  only  one  hour  and  a  half  out 
of  twenty-four.  And  it's  a  rotten,  unreliable,  dirty  cap 
italistic  service  —  the  only  one  we  can  afford.  Half 
of  it  has  to  be  rewritten.  Harry  Moore,  who  also 
reports  night  meetings,  clips  the  labor  papers,  attends 
to  the  make-up,  runs  the  '  Questions  and  Answers,' 
and  collects  jokes  and  fillers,  has  to  read  every  despatch 
and  rewrite  most  of  them.  Yes,  I'm  rather  proud  of 
our  telegraphic  department." 

"Is  the  financial  side  so  hopeless?"  Yetta  asked. 


364  COMRADE  YETTA 

"Well,  I  don't  call  it  hopeless.  You're  a  member  of 
the  Executive  Committee  —  at  least  till  you  resign  — 
so  you'd  best  look  into  the  books." 

For  half  an  hour  they  bent  their  heads  over  balance- 
sheets.  It  was  an  appalling  situation.  The  debt  was 
out  of  all  proportion  to  the  property.  To  be  sure  much 
of  it  was  held  by  sympathizers,  who  were  not  likely  to 
foreclose.  But  there  was  no  immediate  hope  of  decreas 
ing  the  burden.  Any  new  income  would  have  to  go  into 
improvements.  The  future  of  the  paper  depended  not 
only  on  its  ability  to  carry  this  dead  weight,  but  on 
the  continuance  of  the  Pledge  Fund  and  on  Isadore's 
success  in  begging  about  a  hundred  dollars  a  week, 

"It's  hopeless,"  Yetta  said.  "You  might  run  a 
good  weekly  on  these  resources,  but  you  need  ten  times 
as  much  to  keep  up  a  good  daily." 

"Well,  if  you  feel  that  way  about  it,  Yetta,  I  hope 
you'll  resign  at  to-night's  meeting."  His  eyes  turned 
away  from  her  face  about  the  busy  room,  and  his  dis 
couraged  look  gave  place  to  one  of  conviction.  A  note 
of  dogged  determination  rang  in  his  voice.  —  "Because 
it  isn't  hopeless  !  Our  only  real  danger  is  that  the 
executive  committee  may  kill  us  with  cold  water. 
If  we  can  get  a  committee  that  believes  in  us,  we'll 
be  all  right.  A  paper  like  this  isn't  a  matter  of  finance. 
That's  what  you  —  and  the  other  discouragers  —  don't 
see.  You  look  at  it  from  a  bourgeoise  dollar-and-cents 
point  of  view.  It's  hopeless,  is  it  ?  Well,  we've  been 
doing  this  impossible  thing  for  more  than  a  year.  It's 
hopeless  to  carry  such  indebtedness  ?  Good  God ! 
We  started  with  nothing  but  debts  —  nothing  at  all 
to  show.  Every  number  that  comes  out  makes  it 
more  hopeful.  The  advertising  increases.  The  Pledge 


THE  CLARION  365 

Fund  grows.  Why,  we've  got  twelve  thousand  people 
in  the  habit  of  reading  it  now.  That  habit  is  an  asset 
which  doesn't  show  in  the  books.  Six  months  ago  we 
had  nothing !  —  not  even  experience.  Why,  our  office 
force  wasn't  even  organized!  And  now  you  say  it's 
hopeless  —  want  us  to  quit  —  just  when  it's  getting 
relatively  easy.  We  —  " 

Le vine's  querulous  voice  rose  above  the  din  of  the 
machines  —  finding  fault  with  something.  A  stenog 
rapher  in  a  far  corner  began  to  count,  "One!  Two! 
Three!"  Every  one  in  the  office,  even  the  lino- 
typers  and  printer's  devil  beyond  the  partition  took 
up  the  slogan. 

"0-o-oh  !     Cut  it  out  and  work  for  Socialism." 

The  tense  expression  on  Isadore's  face  relaxed  into  a 
confident  grin. 

"  That's  it.  You  think  we  need  money  to  run  this 
paper?  We're  doing  it  on  enthusiasm.  And  nothing 
is  going  to  stop  us." 

"I'll  think  it  over,"  Yetta  said.  "If  I  can't  see  any 
chance  of  helping,  I  won't  stay  on  the  Committee  to 
discourage  you.  I've  got  to  go  up  to  the  League  now 
and  make  peace  with  Mabel.  I  was  so  busy  in  Brook 
lyn  last  night  I  forgot  all  about  a  speaking  engagement 
she'd  made  for  me." 

As  she  rode  uptown  Yetta  was  surprised  by  a  strange 
revulsion  towards  her  old  work  and  workmates.  Why 
the  shattering  of  her  romance  should  have  changed  her 
outlook  on  life  she  could  not  determine.  She  seemed 
somehow  to  have  graduated  from  it  all.  Even  with 
wings  broken  a  butterfly  does  not  want  to  crawl  back 
into  the  chrysalis.  All  her  old  life  had  become  ab 
horrent  to  her.  She  hated  the  steps  in  front  of  the 


366  COMRADE  YETTA 

League  office  as  she  walked  up  them.  She  realized 
that  she  was  dangerously  near  hating  Mabel.  More 
sharply  than  ever  before  she  felt  the  chasm  between  this 
finely  bred  upper-class  woman  and  herself.  No  matter 
how  hard  she  tried  she  would  never  be  able  to  climb 
entirely  out  of  her  sweat-shop  past.  Jealousy  made  her 
unjust.  She  attributed  Walter's  preference  —  which 
was  purely  a  matter  of  chance  —  to  this  difference  in 
breeding. 

Mabel,  sitting  within  at  her  desk,  was  in  no  more 
cordial  a  mood.  Walter  had  not  called  the  night  before. 
This  had  affected  her  more  than  she  would  have  believed 
possible.  It  seemed  typical  of  the  way  she  was  being 
deserted.  A  hungry  loneliness  had  been  gathering 
within  her  of  late.  The  process  of  growing  old  seemed 
to  be  a  gradual  sloughing  off  of  the  relationships  which 
really  counted.  Old  age  with  Eleanor  was  a  dreary 
outlook.  She  had  not  had  many  suitors  this  last  year 
—  none  that  mattered.  As  she  had  sat  at  home  waiting 
for  Walter  to  call,  realizing  minute  by  minute  that  he 
was  not  coming,  the  loneliness  which  had  been  only  a 
hungry  ache  had  changed  to  an  acute  pain.  She  was 
no  more  in  love  with  him  than  before.  But  —  al 
though  she  had  not  admitted  it  to  herself  in  so  many 
words  —  if  he  had  come,  still  seeking  her,  she  knew  she 
would  have  married  him  out  of  sheer  fright  at  the  dole 
ful  prospect  of  being  left  alone. 

At  the  office  that  morning  she  had  found  a  letter, 
which  he  had  written  the  day  before.  He  was  sorry  to 
have  missed  her.  He  was  to  be  in  the  country  only  a 
few  days,  was  leaving  that  afternoon  for  Boston  —  a 
collection  he  wanted  to  look  over  in  the  Harvard 
Museum  —  and  was  sailing  from  there  to  England. 


THE  CLARION  367 

He  told  of  the  Oxford  professorship  he  was  accepting, 
and  he  was  "Very  truly  yours."  He  did  not  even  give 
his  Boston  address. 

It  was  his  formal  "adieu."  It  was  the  concrete  evi 
dence  —  which  is  often  so  distressing,  even  when  the 
fact  is  already  known  —  that  another  chapter  was 
finished. 

She  had  hardly  finished  this  letter  when  a  telephone 
message  had  come,  asking  why  Yetta  had  failed  to  appear 
at  the  meeting.  It  was  a  small  matter,  but  it  seemed 
important  to  Mabel.  Yetta,  the  reliable,  the  depend 
able,  had  failed  her.  Was  this  a  new  desertion  ? 

The  stenographers  had  made  more  mistakes  that 
morning  than  was  their  general  average  for  a  week. 

At  last  Yetta  came  in.  Her  haggard  face  shocked 
Mabel.  She  forgot  her  own  discomforts  in  a  sudden 
flood  of  sympathy. 

" What's  the  matter  ?"  she  asked  anxiously.  "Are 
you  sick?  Is  that  why  you  didn't  speak  last  night?" 

"No,"  Yetta  replied  shortly.  It  irritated  her  to 
think  that  her  heartbreak  showed  in  her  face.  "I'm 
not  sick.  I  forgot." 

"Forgot?" 

"Yes.  I  forgot  all  about  it  till  it  was  too  late  to 
do  any  good  telephoning.  I  was  over  in  Brooklyn. 
And  even  if  I  hadn't  forgot,  I  couldn't  have  come. 
This  paper-box  strike  is  a  lot  more  important  than  that 
meeting." 

"Paper-box  makers?  I  did  not  know  they  were 
striking." 

"If  you  read  The  Glarion,  you'd  find  out  about  such 
things." 

Yetta  tossed  her  copy  on  Mabel's  desk.     The  edge  of 


368  COMRADE  YETTA 

each  word  had  shaved  a  trifle  off  the  traditional  friend 
ship  between  them.  Mabel  had  not  intended  to  lose 
her  temper.  The  sight  of  Yetta  had  touched  her 
deeply.  But  it  seemed  to  her — from  Yetta's  first 
word  —  that  she  was  being  flouted.  The  Clarion  was 
the  last  straw.  Below  the  glaring  headlines  was 
Yetta's  name  at  the  head  of  the  story. 

"So,  you  thought  it  more  important  to  write  an 
article  for  The  Clarion  than  to  keep  an  engagement  for 
the  League  ?  I'd  like  to  know  whether  you're  working 
for  me  or  for  Isadore  Braun." 

Yetta  had  not  intended  to  lose  her  temper,  either. 
But  she  had  been  too  tired  and  storm-tossed  to  be 
thoughtful.  She  was  flooded  by  an  insolent  reckless 
ness.  Mabel  Train  did  not  need  to  put  on  airs,  just 
because  she  had  had  a  better  education. 

"Neither,"  she  said  defiantly.  "I'm  drawing  my 
salary  from  the  Woman's  Trade  Union  League.  If  they 
don't  like  my  work,  all  they've  got  to  do  is  to  tell  me." 

A  stenographer  giggled. 

Yetta  walked  over  to  her  letter-box  and  looked  over 
her  mail. 

"Am  I  to  understand  that  you  are  offering  me  your 
resignation?"  Mabel  asked. 

"Oh,  no  !  I  was  just  making  a  general  statement. 
Any  time  the  Advisory  Council  want  my  resignation 
they  can  get  it  by  asking." 

Suddenly  Yetta  wanted  to  cry. 

"What's  the  use  of  quarrelling  ?"  she  said  contritely, 
coming  over  to  Mabel's  desk.  "I'm  all  done  up. 
Haven't  had  any  sleep  lately.  Cross  as  a  bear.  I'll 
go  home  —  a  couple  of  hours'  sleep  will  do  me  good. 
I'm  sorry  I  —  " 


THE  CLARION  369 

Her  eye  fell  on  the  envelope  of  Walter's  note.  His 
well-loved  handwriting  stared  at  her  —  jeeringly. 
What  did  he  have  to  say  to  Mabel  ?  The  apology  died 
on  her  lips. 

Mabel  was  too  deeply  offended  to  make  peace  easily. 
She  had  felt  humiliated  by  the  snicker  of  her  secretary. 
She  kept  her  eyes  turned  away  and  so  did  not  see  the 
sudden  spasm  of  pain  which  twisted  Yetta's  face.  She 
waited  a  moment  for  the  apology  which  did  not  come. 
Then  she  turned  back  to  her  work  without  looking  up. 

"I  will  certainly  present  the  matter  to  the  next 
meeting  of  the  Advisory  Council,"  she  said  coldly. 

Yetta  turned  without  a  word  and  slammed  the  door 
as  she  went  out. 


2B 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

NEW   WORK 

THINGS  seemed  very  muddled  indeed  to  Yetta  as  she 
rushed  out  of  the  office  of  the  Woman's  Trade  Union 
League.  It  was  not  until  she  reached  the  elevated  and 
was  on  her  way  downtown  that  any  coherent  thought 
came  to  her.  Then  she  was  caught  by  one  of  those 
amazing  psychological  reactions,  which  escape  all 
laboratory  explanation.  She  was  suddenly  calm.  All 
this  turmoil  of  misunderstanding  and  quarrels  was 
utterly  unbelievable.  It  was  quite  impossible  that  her 
love  for  Walter,  her  long  friendship  with  Mabel,  should 
be  wrecked  in  so  short  a  time.  With  the  fairest  look 
of  truth  the  whole  muddle  straightened  out.  That 
note  on  Mabel's  desk  had  been  Walter's  definite  break 
with  her,  an  announcement  of  his  new  love.  It  was 
as  plain  as  day.  A  letter  like  that  would  explain 
Mabel's  raw  humor.  She  would  find  Walter  waiting 
for  her  on  her  doorstep.  They  would  have  supper 
together  and  never,  never  separate  again.  She  began 
to  smile  at  the  thought  of  all  the  dumb,  gratuitous 
misery  of  these  last  two  days.  She  ran  down  the  stairs 
of  the  Ninth  Street  station,  dashed  through  the  chaos 
of  Sixth  Avenue  cars,  and  walked  her  fastest  to  Waverly 
Place. 

370 


NEW  WORK  371 

Walter  was  not  sitting  on  her  doorstep. 

It  was  dark  in  the  hallway  —  appallingly  dark. 
But  the  light  shone  about  her  once  more  when  she 
found  a  letter  from  him  in  her  box.  She  ran  upstairs, 
let  herself  into  the  apartment,  locked  her  bedroom  door, 
and  tore  open  the  letter.  It  was  written  on  the  paper  of 
the  Cafe  Lafayette. 

"DEAR  YETTA, 

"No  word  from  you  all  morning  —  so  I  know  you 
have  decided  to  keep  faith  with  your  Dream.  Perhaps 
you  are  right.  I  hope  for  your  sake  that  you  are  — 
although  it  seems  very  like  a  death  sentence  to  me. 

"I  should  like  to  ask  your  pardon  for  all  the  pain  this 
has  caused  you,  but  it's  hard  to  apologize  for  having 
tried  desperately  to  tell  the  truth.  Feeling  as  your 
silence  tells  me  you  do  about  it,  it  must  be  better  for 
both  of  us  that  Isadore's  coming  forced  an  explanation, 
forced  us  to  an  understanding  —  in  time.  I  trust 
you,  Yetta,  to  see  clearly  —  perhaps  not  now,  but  some 
time  —  how  I  tried  above  all  things  to  be  fair  and  honest 
to  you.  I  wanted  your  love.  You  must  never  think  I 
was  pretending  about  that,  Yetta  darling.  There  is 
nothing  I  want  more  at  this  moment.  And,  although 
you  will  not  agree  with  me  —  and  may  be  right  —  I 
thought  we  could  win  together  to  a  happy,  useful  life. 
I  still  think  we  might  if  you  did  not  feel  about  such 
things  as  you  do. 

"But  after  all,  it  doesn't  matter  much  what  I  think. 
You're  a  woman.  You've  lived  long  enough  to  make 
your  own  choice,  to  formulate  for  yourself  the  demands 
you  will  present  to  the  Great  Employer  —  Life. 

"I  don't  feel  that  you  are  asking  too  much — I 


372  COMRADE  YETTA 

don't  believe  we  can  do  that.  I  won't  admit  that  you 
are  asking  more  than  I.  But  I  doubt  if  you  are  asking 
wisely  —  for  the  Real  Thing.  Yet,  for  years  on  end, 
I  made  the  same  demand.  Perhaps  it  is  my  defeat 
which  has  changed  me  from  a  romanticist  to  a  realist. 
Nowadays  I  prefer  something  real  to  any  Dream. 

"But  you  must  make  your  choice  according  to  your 
present  lights.  I  can't  ask  you  to  accept  my  experience. 
And  more  deeply  —  more  devoutly  —  than  I  wish  for 
anything  else,  I  hope  that  your  Dream  may  lead  your 
feet  into  pleasant  paths  —  to  the  Happy  Valley. 

"Once  my  pen  is  started,  I  could  write  on  and  on  to 
you.  But  this  desire  to  commune  with  you  is  not 
what  you  think  love  should  be,  so  it  would  be  of  no 
comfort.  After  all,  there  is  nothing  more  for  me  to  say. 
It  was  my  business  to  make  you  see  the  choice  clearly. 
You  did,  I  think.  And  you  made  it  bravely.  So  I 
must  say  Good-by. 

"I'm  leaving  in  half  an  hour  for  Boston,  and  I  will 
sail  from  there  in  a  few  days.  The  Fates  have  arranged 
a  haven  for  me  in  Oxford.  It  is  not  what  I  would  like 
most  in  the  world,  but  it  will  do.  Better  chance  to 

you. 

"WALTER." 

Very  little  of  this  letter  reached  Yetta's  conscious 
ness.  The  import  of  all  these  phrases  was  that  he  had 
gone.  So  there  was  not  any  hope.  If  Walter  had 
loved  her  —  in  anything  like  the  way  she  meant  —  he 
would  not  have  gone. 

Yetta  had  not  cried  very  much,  even  as  a  little  girl. 
Now,  it  seemed  to  her  that,  having  lost  control  of  her 
tears,  she  had  lost  everything.  She  wilted  on  to  the 


NEW  WORK  373 

bed,  burying  her  face  in  the  pillow  to  hide  the  shame  of 
her  sobs. 

Her  body  was  utterly  prone  on  the  bed  —  but  her 
spirit  had  fallen  even  lower.  Why  had  she  let  Isadore 
divert  her  with  the  call  to  work  ?  What  did  work  mat 
ter,  if  she  had  lost  Walter?  Why  had  she  not  gone 
to  him  that  first  morning?  He  had  waited  for  some 
word  from  her.  She  had  let  her  stupid  pride  stand  in 
her  way.  What  was  her  pride  worth  to  her  ?  If  she 
had  gone  to  his  room,  she  might  have  held  something 
of  him.  She  had  demanded  all  and  had  lost  everything. 

As  the  minutes  grew  into  hours,  Yetta  sank  deeper 
and  deeper  into  the  Slough  of  Despond.  She  lost  de 
sire  to  struggle  out.  But  gradually  the  wild  turmoil 
of  grief  wore  away,  and  she  fell  into  a  heavy  sleep. 

When  she  awoke,  she  heard  Sadie  moving  about  in  the 
kitchen.  The  pride  which  she  had  cursed  a  few  hours 
before  came  back  to  her.  She  did  not  want  Sadie  to 
see  her  defeat.  There  is  a  vast  difference  between  the 
abstract  proposition,  "Is  life  worth  living?7'  and  the 
concrete  question,  "  Shall  I  let  Tom,  Dick,  or  Mary  see 
tears  in  my  eyes  !"  She  had  wanted  to  die,  and  now 
she  did  not  want  to  be  ashamed. 

So  the  will  came  to  Yetta  to  hold  her  head  high.  It 
was  six  o'clock  when  she  got  up  and  washed  her  face. 
Sadie  was  preparing  supper.  She  wanted  to  go  out  and 
help.  But  instead  she  sat  down  drearily.  She  did  not 
have  the  courage  to  face  her  room-mate.  The  willing  of 
a  deed  does  not  guarantee  the  power  of  execution. 

She  was  dry-eyed  now ;  the  tears  were  spent,  but  she 
was  utterly  weak.  She  leaned  a  little  sideways  and, 
resting  her  cheek  against  the  cool  surface  of  her  bureau, 
looked  —  unseeing  —  out  of  her  window  at  the  array 


374  COMRADE  YETTA 

of  milk  bottles  on  the  window  ledge  across  the  airshaft. 
Where  could  she  find  help  ?  It  was  the  first  time  in 
her  life  she  had  wanted  such  assistance.  Often  she 
had  needed  advice,  aid  in  thinking  things  out.  But 
now  she  needed  help  in  the  elemental  job  of  living. 
Often  she  had  been  at  a  loss  as  to  what  she  ought  to  do, 
but  now  she  knew.  Yet  instead  of  going  out  to  help 
Sadie,  she  sat  there  —  weak. 

If  she  had  been  an  Italian,  she  might  have  crept  out 
to  the  Confessional,  whispered  her  troubles  into  a  kind 
Padre's  ear,  and  so  found  comfort  and  strength.  But 
the  solace  of  religion  was  unknown  to  her.  In  these 
latter  active  years,  even  the  memory  of  her  father  had 
faded.  She  could  no  longer  shut  her  eyes  and  talk 
things  over  with  him.  But  without  some  external 
aid,  she  knew  she  could  not  go  forward.  She  —  the 
individual  —  was  defeated.  Like  the  little  band  of 
besieged  in  Lucknow  there  was  nothing  more  that  she 
could  do.  The  ammunition  was  spent.  In  what  direc 
tion  should  she  turn  in  the  hope  of  hearing  the  pipes 
of  the  rescuers  ? 

In  those  few  desolate  moments  she  saw  her  situation 
clearly.  She  did  not  want  to  die.  But  unless  relief 
came  quickly  the  black  waves  of  death  which  were 
beleaguering  her  spirit  would  close  over  her.  Never 
as  long  as  she  might  live  could  she  ever  be  proud  of  her 
strength  again. 

What  solid,  basic  thing  was  there  for  her  to  lean 
against  ? 

Suddenly  she  caught  the  sound  of  the  distant  bag 
pipes.  She  rushed  out  into  the  hall  and  took  down  the 
receiver  of  the  telephone. 

"  Hello,  Central.     Park  Row  3900." 


NEW  WORK  375 


"Hello.     The  Clarion?" 
"One!     Two!     Three!! 


Sadie  came  to  the  kitchen  door  and  looked  out  in 
surprise.  The  gaslight  shone  full  on  Yetta's  face ;  it 
was  drawn  and  haggard. 

Harry  Moore,  who  happened  to  answer  the  call  in 
•The  Clarion  office,  did  not  recognize  Yetta's  voice,  but 
he  recognized  the  signal  of  distress. 

"O-o-oh  !"  he  shouted  back.  "Cut  it  out  and  work 
for  Socialism." 

Yetta's  fixed  stare  melted  into  the  look  of  one  who 
sees  a  fair  vision,  the  strained  lines  about  her  mouth 
relaxed  into  a  glad  smile. 

"Thanks  !"  she  said,  and  hung  up  the  receiver. 

After  all,  there  was  something  bigger  than  her  little 
personal  woes  —  a  Cause  to  work  for  even  if  her  wings 
were  broken. 

"I'm  sorry  to  have  slept  so  late,"  she  said,  coming 
out  into  the  kitchen.  "I  was  up  on  that  paper-box 
strike  in  Brooklyn  most  of  last  night.  Dead  tired. 
I  turned  in  about  one  this  afternoon.  I  thought  I'd 
surely  wake  up  in  time  to  get  supper." 

Sadie  was  aggrieved  at  Yetta's  matter-of-fact  tone. 
She  knew  that  something  was  wrong.  In  spite  of  the 
firm  smile,  Sadie  was  sure  something  exciting  had 
happened.  She  herself  was  used  to  telling  her  troubles 
to  almost  any  one  who  would  listen.  That  her  ready 
sympathy  should  be  allowed  to  lie  fallow,  hurt  her. 
But  she  did  not  want  Yetta  to  think  she  was  prying. 
So  she  talked  about  other  things.  But  when  Yetta 
put  on  her  hat  after  supper,  Sadie  could  not  help  asking 
where  she  was  going. 

"Down  to  The  Clarion.     An  Executive  Committee. 


376  COMRADE  YETTA 

I  hope  I'll  get  back  early.     This  all-night  game  is 
killing  me." 

Yetta  took  little  part  in  the  Committee  meeting, 
but  she  listened  carefully  to  get  the  measure  of  the 
other  members.  Rheinhardt,  the  chairman,  was  a 
printer ;  he  had  some  familiarity  with  that  side  of  news 
paper  work  at  least.  He  was  a  quiet,  earnest  man,  and 
as  the  evening  passed,  Yetta's  respect  for  him  grew. 
He  seemed  sleepy  and  indifferent  most  of  the  time,  but 
whenever  any  matter  of  real  importance  came  up,  he 
was  wide-awake.  Paulding,  the  magazine  writer, 
with  whom  Isadore  had  spent  his  vacation,  was  the 
strongest  man  on  the  Committee.  But  in  spite  of  his 
deep  interest  in  the  paper,  he  was  a  bit  restive,  quick  to 
voice  any  passing  discouragement,  impatient  with  the 
less-cultured  working-men  and  their  rather  indirect 
methods  of  thought  and  work.  Idle  discussion,  waste 
of  time,  made  him  fume.  Yetta  saw  that  if  she  was 
to  do  any  real  work  on  this  Committee,  it  must  be  in 
cooperation  with  Rheinhardt  and  Paulding  against 
the  other  two  who  were  dead-wood  —  nonentities. 

When  the  routine  work  had  ended  and  they  had 
reached,  in  the  Order  of  Business,  "Good  and  Wel 
fare/'  Rheinhardt  asked  Yetta  if  she  had  any  sugges 
tions. 

" Every  improvement,"  she  said,  " seems  to  depend 
on  getting  more  money.  And  that's  got  to  be  done 
by  increased  circulation.  Our  financial  condition  will 
never  be  sound  so  long  as  we  are  dependent  on  gifts 
and  friendly  loans.  We've  got  about  12,000  circula 
tion  now,  and  I  guess  that's  as  many  Socialists  as  we 
can  count  on.  If  we're  to  grow,  it  must  be  among 
non-Socialist  working-men.  So  it  seems  to  me  that 


NEW  WORK  377 

we  must  put  our  best  efforts  on  the  labor  page.  That 
page  is  very  weak  now.  It's  full  of  stuff  about  the 
unions,  but  it's  written  to  interest  Socialists.  It 
ought  to  be  the  other  way  round.  Until  it  is  made 
interesting  to  working-men  who  are  not  yet  Socialists 
it's  useless  as  a  circulation-getter.'7 

Paulding  leaned  forward  and  broke  in  impulsively. 

"  Comrade,  everybody  has  knocks  !  Every  page  in 
the  paper  is  weak.  We  don't  have  to  be  told  that. 
How  can  it  be  improved  with  the  resources  at  hand  ? 
That's  the  question." 

11  Nothing  can  be  done  without  some  money.  But 
if  we  could  raise  one  man's  salary,  I  think  we  could 
make  a  great  improvement.  What's  needed  is  a  man 
who  can  give  all  his  time  to  it,  some  one  who  has  an 
idea  of  news-value,  of  up-to-date  journalism,  who 
understands  the  labor  movement  and  can  write  about 
it  without  an  offensive  Socialist  bias.'7 

"And,"  Paulding  growled,  "how  much  would  a 
man  like  that  cost  us?  There  aren't  half  a  dozen 
men  with  those  qualifications  in  the  city.  How  much 
would  Karner  pay  a  man,  who  could  make  real  cir 
culation  for  The  Star  out  of  a  labor  page  ?" 

"The  kind  of  man  I  mean  would  value  the  freedom 
we  could  give  him.  Nobody  who's  sincere  likes  to 
work  for  Karner.  We  can  get  him  for  less." 

"Well,  I'm  doubtful,"  Paulding  said.  "We're  sweat 
ing  our  staff  now  worse  than  any  sweat-shop.  Look  at 
this  rotten  office  where  we  ask  them  to  work.  We're 
overworking  them,  underpaying  them,  and  about  every 
week  asking  them  to  sign  off  some  of  their  wages." 

"They  do  it  willingly,"  one  of  the  nonentities  put 
in,  "the  Great  Ideal—" 


378  COMRADE  YETTA 

"Oh  !  that  Great  Ideal  talk  makes  me  tired,"  Pauld- 
ing  interrupted.  "We  can't  get  high-class  men  at 
such  terms.  I  know  two  really  able  men ;  they  give 
us  a  lot  of  stuff  gratis.  They've  got  the  Great  Ideal 
as  strong  as  anybody,  but  they've  also  got  families! 
They'd  be  glad  to  work  for  us  if  we  could  give  them, 
not  fancy  salaries,  but  decent  ones.  We  can't.  The 
men  we've  got  are  wonderful.  I  take  off  my  hat 
whenever  I  think  of  them.  They're  devoted  to  the 
limit.  Very  likely  they're  of  high  moral  character"  — 
his  voice  rose  querulously  —  "good  to  their  mothers, 
and  all  that.  But  there  is  no  use  shutting  our  eyes  to 
the  fact  that  they're  not  newspaper  men.  Braun  had 
some  experience  on  the  Forwaertz.  But  there  isn't  a 
man  in  the  office  who  ever  saw  the  inside  of  a  modern 
metropolitan  daily. 

"What  can  we  offer  a  man?  Twenty-five  dollars 
a  week  —  at  most.  That's  what  Braun  is  getting  — 
sometimes.  It's  a  joke.  A  hundred  a  month  to  our 
editor-in-chief !  That's  our  whole  trouble.  What 


we—" 


"Could  you  offer  twenty-five  a  week?"  Yetta  in 
terrupted  his  despondency. 

"It  would  be  hard,"  Rheinhardt  said. 

"Sure  we  could  —  for  a  good  man,"  Paulding  con 
tradicted  him.  "I  could  guarantee  it  myself.  I've 
a  lot  of  friends  who  are  interested  in  The  Clarion,  but 
just  dead  sick  of  its  sloppy  appearance.  I  haven't 
seen  anything  in  it  for  weeks  that  jolted  me  till  this 
paper-box  story  of  yours.  Think  of  it !  A  Socialist 
paper  which  isn't  afraid  to  tell  the  truth,  but  can't 
afford  to  hire  the  brains  to  do  it !  Yes,  if  we  had  a 
live-wire  on  the  paper,  I  could  find  ten  people  who 


NEW  WORK  379 

would  pledge  ten  dollars  a  month.  But  what's  the 
use  of  talking  about  it?  The  kind  of  man  we  need 
could  get  fifty  a  week  —  more.  It's  the  same  all  the 
way  through.  We  need  keen  men  in  every  depart 
ment  and  can't  afford  to  pay  their  market  value.  If 
we  got  the  right  kind  of  a  man  for  advertising  manager 
—  the  kind  we  need  —  he'd  be  valuable  to  other  richer 
papers.  The  right  kind  of  a  man  for  our  circulation 
department  would  be  worth  ten  thousand  to  a  dozen 
other—" 

"I  don't  know  anything  about  the  business  side  of 
it,"  Yetta  interrupted  again.  "But  I  know  a  lot  of 
reporters.  If  you'll  authorize  me  to  offer  twenty-five 
a  week,  I'll  see  if  I  can  find  one." 

"No  one  can  work  on  the  paper  who  isn't  a  party 
member,"  the  other  nonentity  said.  "We  can't  ask 
the  Comrades  to  put  up  money  to  support  a  broken- 
down  capitalist." 

"What's  the  use  of  discussing  it?"  Paulding  asked 
Yetta,  ignoring  the  nonentity.  "Have  you  the  nerve 
to  ask  a  friend  to  take  such  a  job  ?  You  wouldn't  do 
it  yourself." 

Yetta  suddenly  remembered  that  she  was  probably 
jobless. 

"On  the  contrary,"  she  said,  "if  I  had  the  right  kind 
of  training,  I'd  jump  at  it." 

"Well,"  Rheinhardt  said,  suddenly  waking  up,  "I 
think  you  come  nearer  to  what  we  need  than  any  one 
we're  likely  to  find.  If  Paulding  can  raise  twenty- 
five  a  week,  will  you  accept  it  ?" 

"Yes,"  Paulding  chimed  in,  "I'll  get  the  money. 
Will  you  do  it?" 

"I  haven't  the  training,"  Yetta  laughed,  not  taking 


380  COMRADE  YETTA 

the  offer  seriously.  "I've  only  had  six  months'  news 
paper  work  altogether,  and  that  was  very  specialized 
stuff  on  the  Woman's  page.  We  need  some  one  with 
more  general  and  longer  experience." 

"You  don't  answer/'  Rheinhardt  said,  slumping 
back  in  his  chair;  "we  can't  get  the  wonder  you  talk 
about.  Even  with  your  limited  experience  you  can 
earn  more  elsewhere." 

"Of  course  you  won't  take  it,"  Paulding  sneered. 
"Not  that  I  blame  you.  I'm  not  taking  it  either." 

"On  second  thought,"  Yetta  said,  "I  will." 

It  was  a  complicated  psychological  process  which 
caused  Yetta  so  suddenly  to  throw  in  her  lot  with  the 
struggling  Socialist  paper.  She  did  not  often  act  so 
impetuously. 

The  motive  which  seemed  to  her  strongest  was  the 
distaste  for  her  old  life  which  had  suddenly  flooded  her. 
She  had  emigrated  spiritually.  Fate  had  jerked  her 
roughly  out  of  the  orderly  progress,  which  had  been 
typified  by  Walter's  great  leather  chair.  It  seemed 
incongruous  to  go  on  with  the  old  work  of  the  League 
from  the  new  flat  in  Waverly  Place.  Everything  must 
be  changed. 

But  a  self-protective  instinct,  more  subtle  and  less 
easily  recognized,  was  equally  strong.  She  was  not  so 
likely  to  be  reminded  of  Walter  in  the  rushing  turmoil 
of  The  Clarion  office.  In  learning  the  details  of  a  new 
job  she  would  have  less  time  and  energy  for  the  de 
structive  work  of  mourning. 

Deeper  even  than  this  was  a  subconscious  reaching 
out  for  help.  Here  she  could  find  the  strength  she 
needed  to  go  forward.  She  had  tapped  it  over  the 
telephone  wire  when  she  had  been  tottering  on  the  raw 


NEW   WORK  381 

edge  of  despair.  She  wanted  to  keep  ever  in  touch 
with  this  indomitable  little  band  of  fighters.  She  had 
looked  down  upon  them  —  rather  despised  them  — 
from  the  false  standard  she  had  acquired  uptown. 
They  had  seemed  to  her  unkempt.  But  in  her  moment 
of  greatest  need  it  was  to  them  she  had  turned.  "  Cul 
ture"  and  " gentility"  had  been  no  help  to  her.  It 
was  the  handclasp  of  her  own  people  that  had  given 
her  strength  to  climb  up  out  of  the  Slough  of  De 
spond. 

As  a  little  child  in  whose  brain  is  as  yet  no  clear 
concept  of  " danger"  clings,  when  frightened,  to  its 
mother's  hand,  so  Yetta  —  knowing  that  her  need 
had  not  passed,  afraid  of  the  future  —  wanted  to  keep 
close  to  the  protecting  enthusiasm,  the  dauntless  faith 
which  had  proven  her  only  helper  —  her  one  hope  of 
salvation. 

But  it  was  not  until  many  months  had  passed  that 
Yetta  woke  up  to  a  vital,  emotional  attitude  towards 
her  new  work.  The  deeper  side  of  her  personality 
had  been  stunned  by  the  crash  of  her  romance.  She 
walked  through  life  a  high-class  physical  machine,  a 
keen,  forthright  intellect.  But  it  did  not  seem  to 
matter  very  much  to  her.  Nothing  did.  The  moments 
came  when  she  cursed  the  Fates  for  having  sent  Walter 
to  rescue  her  from  Harry  Klein.  That  could  have 
been  no  more  painful,  and  it  would  have  been  over 
quicker.  The  years  she  had  spent  studying  seemed 
only  to  have  increased  her  capacity  for  suffering. 

Each  day  was  a  task  to  be  accomplished.  The  very 
uncertainty  of  The  Clarion's  existence  fitted  into  Yet- 
ta's  mood.  Any  moment  the  flimsy  structure  might 
collapse.  She  thought  of  the  future  as  little  as  possi- 


382  COMRADE  YETTA 

ble.  Can  I  get  through  another  day  without  breaking 
down  ?  Can  we  get  out  another  issue  ?  These  two 
questions  seemed  almost  the  same  to  her.  She  and 
the  paper  were  struggling  desperately  to  keep  going 
until  they  found  firmer  ground  underfoot. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 

YETTA   TAKES  HOLD 

BUT  if  Yetta  did  not  think  her  work  mattered  very 
much,  Isadore  and  Rheinhardt  and  Paulding  and  all 
those  who  had  the  welfare  of  The  Clarion  at  heart 
thought  very  differently  about  it.  Gradually  she 
transformed  the  labor  page  into  a  vital  force  in  the 
trade-union  world. 

Organized  labor  is  fighting  out  the  same  problem 
in  democracy  which  our  larger  community  is  facing. 
"How  shall  elected  delegates  be  made  to  represent 
their  constituents  ?  "     The  rank  and  file  of  workers  can 
not  attend  all  the  meetings  of  their  central  organiza- 
|  tions  any  more  than  we  can  spend  all  our  time  in  watch- 
|ing  Congress.     Labor  bosses,  like  political  crooks,  love 
darkness.     Yetta,  taking  a  suggestion  from  the  pro 
gressive  magazines,  turned  the  light  of  publicity  on 
the  weekly  meetings  of  the  Central  Federated  Union. 
She  made  the  Monday  afternoon  labor  page  a  verbatim 
I  report  of  the  Sunday  session.     Among  the  delegates 
I  to  the  C.  F.  U.  there  were  many  fearless,  upright  men 
who  were  as  much  opposed  to  gang  politics  as  any 
insurgent  senator  at  Washington.     Yetta  knew  them 
from  her  old  work  and  drew  them  into  a  sort  of  informal 
Good  Government  Club.     Every  day  she  tried  to  run 

383 


384  COMRADE  YETTA 

some  story  dealing  with  this  issue  of  clean  politics 
More  and  more  the  "labor  grafters"  denounced  The 
Clarion,  and  more  and  more  their  opponents  came 
to  rely  on  it  as  their  greatest  ally.  The  percentage 
of  " crooked "  and  "straight"  among  the  unionists  is 
about  the  same  as  in  any  church  membership.  The 
circulation  grew  among  the  honest  workers  —  the  vas 
majority. 

Her  influence  was  not  confined  to  her  own  depart 
ment.     Her  experience  in  the  Woman's  Trade  Union 
League  had  made  her  an  expert  beggar  ;  more  and  more 
she  helped  Isadore,  relieving  him  of  some  of  the  bur 
den  of  money-raising.     This  freed  more  of  his  time 
and  energy  for  his  page.     He  listened  more  docilely  to 
her  suggestions  about  bettering  the  style  of   his  edi 
torials  —  adding  snap  to   them  —  than   he  had   done 
when  Paulding  had  tried  to  help  him.     The  improve 
ment  was  noticeable.     During  her  apprenticeship  undei 
Mr.  Brace  Yetta  had  absorbed  some  of  his  "sense  o 
make-up."     Harry  Moore  often  appealed  to  her  judg 
ment.     In   time    The   Clarion  began   to   look  almos 
attractive. 

One  day  Yetta's  old  friend  Cowan,  the  sporting 
editor  of  The  Star,  met  her  on  the  street. 

"I  hear  you're  working  on  this  Socialist  paper,' 
he  said.     "How  goes  it?" 

"I  like  it  better  than  The  Star,"  she  replied. 

"I've  looked  over  some  of  the  copies,"  he  said 
"You  people  aren't  handling  local  news  the  way  you 
ought  to.  Why  don't  you  tear  the  lid  off  this  Subway 
scandal  ?  I'm  not  a  Socialist.  But  I  hate  to  see  such 
good  stories  going  to  waste." 

Yetta  rather  wearily  went  over  the  long  story  o: 


YETTA  TAKES  HOLD  385 

their  limitations.  She  had  learned  to  recite  it  as 
glibly  as  Isadore  or  Paulding. 

"It's  too  bad/'  Cowan  said,  as  he  left  her.  "I 
didn't  realize  you  were  up  against  it  so  hard.  I  sure 
hate  to  see  some  of  these  hot  stories  unused." 

A  couple  of  days  later,  Yetta  received  a  long,  un 
signed  typewritten  manuscript.  It  was  a  well-written 
story  of  a  session  of  the  Public  Service  Commission. 
A  witness  had  made  a  statement  which  seemed  to 
offer  the  key  to  the  whole  situation  in  the  tangled 
effort  of  the  city  to  get  decent  transportation.  A 
few  more  questions  promised  to  bring  out  the  fact  — 
generally  suspected  —  that  a  well-known  banker  was 
obstructing  progress.  The  chairman  had  unexpectedly 
adjourned  the  sitting.  When  they  reassembled,  the 
old  witness  —  the  only  one  who  had  ever  shown  any 
willingness  to  remember  important  things  —  had  left 
town.  Then  followed  from  official  court  records  a 
list  of  the  cases  in  which  the  Chairman  of  the  Com- 
|  mission  had  served  as  personal  attorney  for  the  banker 
j who  wras  under  suspicion.  It  was  a  wr ought-iron 
(story,  hardly  a  word  in  it  was  not  public  record ;  chapter 
and  verse  were  cited  for  every  allegation.  Yetta  called 
up  Cowan  and  asked  him  about  it.  He  denied  all 
knowledge  of  it  so  ardently  that  she  was  sure  he  had 
sent  it.  They  made  a  screaming  front-page  story  of  it. 
The  regular  papers  denounced  it  as  "a  malicious  and 
audacious  lie"  —  which  was  good  advertising  for  The 
•^Clarion.  More  anonymous  stories  followed.  They 
iattracted  a  new  class  of  readers.  The  circulation 
'grew.  Gradually  Yetta  and  The  Clarion  found  firmer 
1  ground  underfoot. 

Despite  her  strenuous  work  for  The  Clarion,  Yetta 

2c 


386  COMRADE  YETTA 

did  not  lose  interest  in,  nor  neglect,  her  vest-makers 
union.  She  was  not  alone  in  her  ambition  to  see  all  the 
garment  trades  allied  in  a  strong  federation.  There 
were  many  Socialists  in  the  various  unions,  and  there 
were  many  who,  while  not  party  members,  had  been  in 
fluenced  by  the  propaganda  of  the  Industrial  Workers  of 
the  World.  As  the  months  passed  the  sentiment  for 
"One  Big  Union"  grew  steadily.  At  last,  when  Yetta 
had  been  about  a  year  on  The  Clarion,  a  convention  of 
all  the  garment  trades  was  called  to  consider  the  matter. 

The  victory  of  Yetta's  faction  was  by  no  means  sure. 
Each  union  had  its  own  ambitions,  which  it  was  loath 
to  sacrifice  for  the  common  good.  In  all  the  unions 
there  were  little  groups  of  "officials"  —  some  of  them 
afraid  of  losing  their  salaries  in  the  proposed  new  ar 
rangement,  more  who  feared  to  lose  their  influence. 
A  union  man  who  is  elected  to  the  executive  committee 
by  his  fellows  has  all  the  personal  pride  in  the  matter 
that  a  college  graduate  has  in  being  on  the  board  of 
governors  of  his  club.  The  union  man  has  the  same 
temptation  to  resort  to  petty  intrigues  to  hold  his 
place.  Officialdom  always  distrusts  innovations  - 
is  always  conservative.  Working-men  are  surprisingly 
like  the  rest  of  us  —  especially  in  these  little  personal 
jealousies  and  meannesses. 

There  was  also  the  hostility  of  the  American  Federa 
tion  of  Labor  to  overcome.  Within  that  great  organiza 
tion  the  same  struggle  between  industrialism  and  the 
old-fashioned  craft-unionism  was  waxing  more  bitter 
every  year.  A  bitter  opposition  was  growing  against 
the  rule  of  Samuel  Gompers  and  his  satellites.  No  one 
denied  that  this  group  had  done  great  service  to  the 
cause  of  labor  —  ten,  fifteen,  twenty  years  ago.  But 


YETTA  TAKES  HOLD  38> 

the  younger  union  men  —  especially  those  most  in 
sympathy  with  Socialism  or  the  I.  W.  W.  —  said  these 
" leaders"  were  getting  old,  that  they  were  out  of  touch 
with  the  times.  Naturally  these  leaders  did  not  look 
with  favor  on  the  spread  of  such  ideas. 

Yetta  and  her  friends  saw  at  once  that  their  only 
hope  of  success  lay  in  appealing  to  the  rank  and  file. 
So  during  the  first  days  of  the  convention,  while  the 
official  delegates  were  denouncing  the  principles  of 
Industrial  Unionism,  Yetta  spoke  at  noon  factory 
meetings,  two  or  three  times  each  evening,  and  devoted 
almost  all  of  The  Clarion's  " Labor  Page"  to  the  same 
subject.  This  is  the  secret  of  democratic  politics.  If 
the  mass  of  the  people  can  be  stirred  into  watching  and 
controlling  their  representatives,  Democracy  is  safe. 
The  mass  of  the  garment  workers  believed  in  federa 
tion.  They  made  their  wishes  heard  even  in  the  Con 
vention  Hall,  —  it  is  rare,  indeed,  that  the  will  of  the 
people  control  such  assemblies, — and  when  the  crucial 
vote  was  taken,  the  resolution  of  the  industrial  unionists 
was  carried  by  an  unexpectedly  large  majority. 

For  close  to  five  years,  Yetta  had  been  working  to 
wards  this  end.  At  first  she  had  been  laughed  at  and 
snubbed.  The  victory  made  her  wild  with  joy  —  but 
also  she  felt  very  tired.  The  meeting  did  not  break  up 
till  after  one  in  the  morning.  The  last  week  had  been  a 
ceaseless  rush.  She  felt  that  if  she  went  to  sleep  she 
would  not  wake  up  for  a  month  or  so.  It  was  important 
to  have  the  story  in  the  morrow's  Clarion,  and  Isadore 
ought  to  write  an  editorial  on  the  victory.  She 
decided  to  go  to  the  office,  hammer  out  the  "copy," 
leave  a  note  for  Isadore,  and  then  go  home  to  sleep  with 
a  clear  conscience. 


388  COMRADE  YETTA 

The  elevator  was  not  running  at  this  hour,  and  Yetta 
had  to  climb  up  the  six  flights  to  the  Clarion's  loft  in 
the  dark.  There  is  something  eerie  and  weird  about  a 
deserted  office.  The  feverish  activity  of  the  day  haunts 
the  place  like  a  ghost,  even  in  the  stillest  hours  of  the 
night.  Although  Yetta  knew  the  room  was  empty 
there  was  a  very  distinct  feeling  that  some  one  was  there. 
She  was  not  afraid  of  the  dark,  but  it  was  a  decided 
relief  when,  after  much  fumbling  about,  she  found  the 
way  to  her  table  and  turned  on  the  light.  The  electric 
globe  hung  low,  and  the  light  was  so  concentrated, 
by  a  green  glass  shade,  that  it  shone  glaringly  on  the 
table  and  typewriter,  but  did  not  illumine  the  rest  of 
the  room  at  all. 

Once  Yetta  had  a  sheet  of  paper  arranged  in  her 
machine,  the  feeling  of  weirdness  left  her,  and  soon  the 
spirit  of  composition  made  her  forget  that  she  was 
tired.  For  an  hour  she  hammered  the  keyboard  with 
out  interruption.  It  was  not  till  she  had  finished  her 
" story"  that  the  fatigue  reasserted  itself.  She  ought 
to  look  over  the  copy  to  make  corrections.  She  ought 
also  to  write  a  note  to  Isadore  about  the  convention  and 
to  say  that  she  was  going  home  to  sleep  a  week. 
She  stretched  herself  energetically  to  drive  away  the 
drowsiness  and  —  unconsciously  —  her  arms  went  down 
on  the  table,  her  head  down  on  her  arms,  and  she  was 
hopelessly  asleep. 

Isadore  was  generally  the  first  of  the  editorial  force 
to  come  to  the  office.  His  " eight-hour"  workday 
was  from  4  A.M.  till  noon.  On  his  way  to  the  office  in 
the  morning  he  picked  up  the  early  editions  of  the  other 
papers,  clipped  the  news  he  wanted  worked  up  for  their 
afternoon  edition,  and  got  his  day's  editorial  finished 


YETTA  TAKES  HOLD  389 

>efore  the  rest  of  the  staff  turned  up.  It  was  his  theory 
hat  if  he  had  an  evening  engagement,  —  a  committee 
meeting  or  a  speech  to  make,  —  he  would  sleep  four 
lours  in  the  afternoon.  If  he  had  work  in  the  after- 
loon,  he  went  to  bed  before  nine.  So  he  got  in  seven 
lours  of  sleep  every  day  —  theoretically.  But  it  so 
ften  happened  that  he  had  work  to  do  both  afternoon 
ind  evening  that  the  week  was  rare  when  he  averaged 
nore  than  five  hours  sleep  a  day. 

He  generally  found  the  office  empty  when  he  arrived. 
But  this  morning  a  light  was  burning  in  the  back  of  the 
oft  —  "the  composing  room."  One  of  the  linotypers, 
vho  was  also  a  mechanic,  had  come  a  few  minutes  be- 
ore  him  to  repair  one  of  the  machines  which  had  gone 
wrong,  and  so  save  the  expense  of  bringing  in  an  expert, 
t  was  a  violation  of  the  union  rules,  but  this  linotyper 
was  a  Socialist. 

" Comrade,"  he  said,  when  he  saw  Braun,  "it's  a 
Time.  This  linotype  is  worn  out.  I'm  getting  it  so 
t  will  run  again,  but  it's  dead  slow.  And  it'll  break 
down  again  in  a  couple  of  days.  It  ought  to  be 
crapped.  It  costs  more  to  keep  it  going  than  the 
nterest  on  the  price  of  a  new  machine.  It's  uneco 


nomic." 


Isadore  said  he  would  talk  it  over  with  the  executive 
iommittee.  He  made  his  way  through  the  shadowy 
nachines  to  the  front  part  of  the  loft,  which  was  by 
courtesy  called  "the  Editorial  Room."  No  one  who  has 
not  experienced  the  expensiveness  of  poverty  can  realize 
low  maddening  it  is  to  throw  money  away  because  you 
are  not  rich  enough  to  save  it.  Isadore  knew  there  was 

ry  little  chance  of  buying  a  new  linotype.  He  turned 
jthe  end  of  a  long  bookcase  and  suddenly  saw  the  light 


390  COMRADE  YETTA 

burning  over  Yetta's  table ;  he  saw  her  stretched  out 
motionless  across  her  work.  He  had  never  seen  her 
asleep.  With  an  awful  sinking  of  the  heart  the  thought 
came  that  she  might  be  dead.  He  sprang  towards  her 
and  called  her  name.  In  the  semidarkness  he  upset  a 
chair  with  appalling  clatter. 

Yetta,  startled  out  of  profound  sleep,  sprang  to  her 
feet.  Her  head  struck  the  light,  which  hung  low,  broke 
the  glass  shade ;  the  jar  dislocated  the  fragile  film  of  the 
lamp.  In  the  instant  before  the  light  went  out,  the  only 
thing  which  Yetta  realized  was  that  her  surroundings 
were  unfamiliar.  She  had  never  been  so  frightened 
before  in  her  life.  When  they  told  her  afterwards  that 
she  had  screamed,  she  could  hardly  believe  it.  She 
could  not  recall  having  done  so.  The  first  thing  she 
was  conscious  of  was  that  some  one's  arms  were  about 
her  and  Isadore's  voice  was  saying, — ungrammatically 
but  convincingly,  —  "It's  me." 

After  the  hideous  nightmare  of  fright,  his  accustomed 
voice,  his  strong  arms  about  her,  were  utterly  comfort 
ing.  She  told  herself  afterwards  that  she  must  have 
been  partly  over  the  verge  of  fainting,  for  Isadore 
kissed  her  and  she  made  no  motion  —  had  no  idea  —  of 
resistance.  First,  in  the  darkness,  his  hand  had  found 
the  way  to  her  neck  and  face ;  then  she  had  felt  the  hot 
wave  of  his  breath,  —  murmuring  words  which  made 
no  sense  to  her,  —  and  then  his  lips  on  her  cheek  and 
mouth.  She  was  never  quite  sure  if  she  had  kissed 
him  back.  Whether  she  had  or  not  she  knew  she  had 
been  very  close  to  doing  so. 

But  the  moment  of  forgetfulness  had  been  inter 
rupted  by  the  linotyper,  running  towards  them  and 
asking  the  cause  of  the  commotion.  At  the  idea  of! 


YETTA  TAKES  HOLD  391 

an  onlooker,  Yetta  disengaged  herself  from  Isadore 's 
arms  —  just  in  time.  The  linotyper  turned  on  a  light. 
Isadore  tried  to  laugh. 

"We  scared  ourselves  nearly  to  death,"  he  explained. 
"  Comrade  Ray ef sky  had  fallen  asleep.  The  sight  of 
her  scared  me  into  upsetting  a  chair.  That  startled 
her  awake.  She  jumped  up  so  quick  she  broke  the 
lamp." 

The  linotyper  was  a  good  fellow.  He  unscrewed  a 
lamp  from  another  socket  and  substituted  it  for  the  one 
Yetta  had  broken,  and  went  decently  back  to  his  work. 

Isadore  seemed  on  the  point  of  coming  towards  her, 
and  Yetta  retreated  back  of  the  chair. 

"How  stupid  of  me  to  fall  asleep.  We  won  out  at 
the  convention.  I  came  down  to  write  it  up.  I  must 
have  just  started  to  look  it  over  when  I  went  to  sleep. 
You'll  have  to  grind  out  an  editorial  on  it.  I'll  finish  it 
up  at  once." 

She  sat  down  to  her  work. 

Isadore  found  it  harder  to  bring  his  wits  together. 
But  her  movement  of  retreat  had  been  like  a  blow  in  the 
face  to  him.  It  steadied  him  a  trifle  —  but  only  a 
trifle.  He  had  kissed  Yetta.  All  these  years  he  had 
loved  her.  Suddenly  —  utterly  unexpectedly  —  the 
Heavens  had  opened.  He  had  held  her  in  his  arms,  he 
had  kissed  her. 

The  foolish  idea  came  to  him  that  he  would  like  to 
look  at  his  lips,  which  —  after  waiting  so  long  —  had  at 
last  found  their  goal.  As  there  was  no  mirror  in  the 
office,  this  was  manifestly  impossible.  But  his  hand  — 
at  least  he  could  look  at  that  —  it  also  had  caressed 
the  beloved  face.  His  hand  was  stained  with  blood. 
For  an  instant  he,  was  dazed.  Yetta  —  her  cheeks 


392  COMRADE  YETTA 

aflame  —  was  bent  over  her  work.  A  little  stream  of 
blood  ran  down  her  neck,  where  a  bit  of  the  broken 
lamp-shade  had  cut  her  in  its  fall. 

"Yetta,  Yetta  !"  he  cried,  "you're  wounded." 

"What?"  she  said  in  amazement.  She  had  been 
preparing  a  crushing  answer  in  case  he  started  to  make 
love  again.  The  emotions  that  were  tearing  her  were 
too  violent  to  let  her  take  note  of  a  little  cut. 

"Look,"  he  said,  showing  her  his  hand.  "Broken 
glass.  On  your  neck.  Let  me  see." 

Impressed  by  the  sight  of  blood,  she  bent  her  head 
for  the  examination.  But  Isadore's  ideas  of  treating 
such  a  wound  were  sentimental  rather  than  scientific. 

"Oh,  don't.  Please!"  she  protested,  agonized  by 
shame.  She  struggled  up  to  her  feet,  but  somehow 
she  had  forgotten  the  crushing  retort  she  had  prepared. 
"  It  isn't  serious.  It  doesn't  hurt.  Please  let  me  finish 
this  work." 

Isadore  retreated  before  her  distressed  eyes. 

"Wipe  the  blood  off  your  lips,"  she  ordered  sternly. 

Then  she  sat  down  again,  utterly  confused.  It 
seemed  such  a  stupid,  inane  thing  she  had  said.  It 
was  all  her  fault,  she  unjustly  told  herself.  If  only  she 
had  kept  her  wits  that  first  moment  instead  of  being  so 
childishly  frightened.  She  felt  humiliated.  It  took 
an  extreme  effort  of  will  to  turn  her  attention  to  the 
garment  workers  and  the  article  she  must  correct.  It 
would  have  helped  if  she  could  have  heard  the  scratch 
ing  of  his  pen  or  the  rustle  of  his  newspaper.  There 
was  not  a  sound  from  his  desk.  She  did  not  dare  to 
look  around. 

At  last  the  task  was  finished.  She  put  on  her  cloak 
and  hat  and  wrapped  the  muffler  about  her  throat  before 


YETTA  TAKES  HOLD  393 

she  found  courage  to  look  at  Isadore.  He  was  sunk 
down  in  his  chair,  watching  her  hungrily.  She  bit 
her  lip  at  the  sight  and  had  trouble  speaking. 

"Isad  —  Comrade,  here's  the  copy.  I  hope  you  can 
make  an  editorial  out  of  it.  It's  awfully  important  for 
Organized  Labor.  —  This  convention  has  finished  me. 
I'm  dead  tired.  I'll  take  a  vacation  to-morrow  —  I 
mean  to-day — and  sleep." 

Isadore  did  not  reply.  He  just  looked  at  her,  a 
dumb  plea  in  his  eyes  —  which  she  did  not  want  to  seem 
to  understand. 

"So  long,"  she  said. 

She  was  almost  out  of  sight  before  he  spoke. 

"  You'll  come  back  ?    When  you're  rested  ?  " 

"Why,  yes/'  she  said.     "Of  course." 

It  was  at  least  half  an  hour  before  Isadore  pulled 
himself  together  and  got  to  work.  But  the  editorial 
which  he  wrote  on  the  Federated  Garment  Trades  was 
very  creditable. 

Yetta  walked  home  through  the  dawn.  She  was  very 
tired,  and  she  tried  not  to  think.  But  she  could  not 
free  herself  from  the  insistent  question  —  "Did  I  really 
kiss  him?"  She  looked  at  herself  in  the  glass,  just 
before  she  turned  out  the  gas  and  went  to  bed.  "Did 
I  really  kiss  him?"  she  asked  her  reflected  image. 
She  got  no  answer,  and,  as  though  vexed  at  this  silence, 
she  spoke  defiantly.  "If  I  did,  I'm  sorry.  I  don't  love 
him."  This  rather  comforted  her,  and  she  fell  asleep 
at  once. 

But  when  she  woke  up  in  the  early  afternoon,  she  felt 
worse  about  the  night's  adventure  than  ever.  Very 
emphatically  she  told  herself  that  she  loved  Walter. 
That  had  been  La  grande  passion.  No.  Not  "had 


394  COMRADE  YETTA 

been";  it  "was."  It  was  a  treason  to  think  of  it  as 
" having  been."  She  had  told  Walter  that  love  had 
no  tenses,  that  it  was  "  somehow  eternally  always  and 
now  and  for  ever  and  ever."  Romance  still  dominated 
all  her  thinking.  The  books  and  poems  said  there 
could  only  be  one  real  love.  She  was  sure  that  her  love 
for  Walter  had  been  real  —  hence,  in  strict  logic, 
she  loved  him  still  and  always  would  and  could  never 
love  any  one  else. 

Although  she  really  believed  this  —  wanted  to  be 
lieve  it,  felt  that  life  would  be  impossible  on  any  other 
hypothesis  —  she  was  beginning  to  realize  that  some 
how  the  Romantic  Explanation  of  Life  does  not  quite 
explain.  For  the  poets  it  was  beautifully  simple  — 
either  you  loved  or  you  did  not  love.  It  was  the  crudest 
sort  of  dualism.  Things  were  black  or  white.  The 
gray  tones  were  not  mentioned. 

But  while  she  did  not  love  Isadore  as  she  had  loved 
Walter,  he  was  certainly  in  a  different  category  from  all 
the  other  men  whom  she  did  not  love.  The  men  at  the 
office,  for  instance.  She  was  the  best  of  chums  with 
them;  she  respected  them,  admired  them,  liked  them 
—  and  did  not  love  them.  But  it  was  different  with 
Isadore. 

The  hungry  look  in  his  eyes  haunted  her.  The 
memory  of  his  sudden,  unexpected  ardor  —  the  rough 
vehemence  of  his  caresses,  his  stormy  outbreak  of 
passionate  tenderness  —  disturbed  and  distressed  her. 
She  had  never  taken  him  quite  seriously  before.  She 
had  deliberately,  but  unconsciously,  refused  to  look 
the  matter  in  the  face.  It  is  very  hard  to  be  sympathetic 
and  just  to  a  love  we  do  not  return.  It  had  not  oc 
curred  to  her  that  Isadore's  love  was  as  painful  to  him  as 


YETTA  TAKES  HOLD  395 

hers  for  Walter  had  been.  That  startling  contact  in  the 
dark  of  the  office  had  opened  her  eyes  to  the  reality  of 
his  passion.  What  a  mess  it  all  was  !  Isadore  loved 
her.  She  loved  Walter.  Walter  loved  Mabel! 

The  sun  was  resplendent,  and  Yetta — having  promised 
herself  a  holiday  —  walked  over  to  Washington  Square 
and  took  a  bus  up  to  Riverside  Drive.  It  was  zero 
weather,  the  sun  shone  dazzlingly  on  the  blanket  of  snow, 
which  had  given  an  unwonted  beauty  to  the  Jersey 
shore.  Yetta  walked  up  and  down  the  Drive  till  the 
sinking  sun  had  reddened  the  West  with  an  added 
glory.  It  was  not  often  that  she  had  such  outings. 
The  crisp  air  stimulated  her.  She  was  happy  with  the 
pure  joy  of  being  alive  and  outdoors  in  a  way  she  had 
not  known  since  Walter  went  away.  To  be  sure  her 
mood  was  tinged  with  melancholy.  She  was  sorry  for 
Isadore.  But  less  sorry  than  usual  for  herself.  Some 
how  she  felt  less  bitterly  the  appalling  loneliness. 

As  she  was  going  downtown  in  the  dusk  she  noticed  a 
poster  of  the  Russian  Symphony  Orchestra.  It  offered  a 
programme  from  Tchaikovsky.  She  had  some  neglected 
work  she  ought  to  finish  up.  She  had  barely  enough 
money  in  her  pocket  for  a  ticket  —  and  a  hundred 
things  she  ought  to  use  it  for.  But  in  a  sudden  dare 
devil  expansiveness,  she  dropped  off  the  bus,  got  a 
scrap  of  supper  at  a  Childs'  restaurant,  and  went  to  the 
concert. 

Under  the  spell  of  the  music  she  forgot  all  her  pre 
occupations.  Her  intellect  dropped  down  into  sub- 
consciousness.  She  did  not  think  —  she  felt. 

Music  can  be  the  most  decorative  of  all  the  Arts  —  or 
the  most  intellectual.  The  trained  musician,  who  knows 
the  meaning  of  " theme"  and  " development,"  who  can 


396  COMRADE  YETTA 

recite  glibly  all  the  arguments  for  or  against  "  pro 
gramme'7  music,  who  will  tell  you  offhand  in  what  year 
this  Symphony  was  written,  whether  it  is  a  production  of 
the  composer's  " first  period"  or  a  mature  work,  cannot 
avoid  bringing  a  large  assortment  of  purely  intellectual 
considerations  —  historical  and  technical  —  to  the  ap 
preciation  of  music.  But  to  the  naive  listener,  like 
Yetta,  music  is  decorative.  It  appeals  solely  to  the 
emotions.  It  is  never  interesting  —  it  is  either  pleasing 
or  displeasing.  Yetta  sat  dreamily  through  the  con 
cert  —  half  the  time  with  closed  eyes  —  and  found  it 
wonderful.  There  was  too  little  chance  for  the  play  of 
sentiments  in  her  life.  Every  waking  hour  she  had 
to  think.  Tchaikovsky  laid  a  caressing  hand  over  the 
tired  eyes  of  her  intellect  and  showed  beautiful  things 
to  her  heart. 

The  next  morning  as  Yetta  went  to  the  office  she 
thought  with  some  uneasiness  of  meeting  Isadore.  As 
usual  in  such  matters  she  decided  to  face  the  affair 
frankly. 

"Good  morning/'  she  said,  going  at  once  to  his  desk ; 
"I'm  sorry  about  what  happened  the  other  night.  I 
was  startled  and  bewildered." 

Isadore  knew  that  she  had  been  taken  unawares  — 
that  the  kiss  did  not  belong  to  him  by  rights. 

"If  there's  any  apology  necessary,"  he  said,  "I'm 
the  one  to  make  it.  I  was  as  much  startled  and  bewil 
dered  as  you  were.  I'm  sorry  if  you  feel  bad  about  it." 

"We'll  forget  it,"  Yetta  said. 

Isadore  did  not  look  as  if  he  were  certain  on  this 
point. 

They  fell  again  into  the  accustomed  rut  of  com 
radeship.  Neither  of  them  spoke  again  of  the  out- 


YETTA  TAKES  HOLD  397 

burst.  No  one  in  the  office  noticed  any  change  in  their 
relationship. 

But  there  was  a  change.  Isadore  could  never  forget 
that  wonderful  moment ;  he  could  never  be  quite  the 
same.  And  Yetta  —  when  in  time  the  memory  of  it 
lost  its  element  of  excitement,  when  she  got  over  being 
afraid  that  Isadore  might  begin  again  —  found  that  she 
also  had  changed.  The  fact  that  Isadore  loved  her 
passionately  had  taken  a  definite  place  in  her  conscious 
ness.  She  could  not  ignore  this  any  more,  as  she  had 
done  before.  In  a  way  it  made  him  more  interesting. 
She  did  not  for  a  moment  think  of  marrying  him  —  she 
loved  Walter.  But  she  was  sorry  for  Isadore.  They 
had  this  added  thing  in  common  —  the  pain  of  a  hope 
less  love. 

It  seemed  wildly  unjust  to  her  that  she  might  not  in 
any  way  show  her  sympathy  to  him  without  encourag 
ing  his  love  —  making  him  "hope."  She  knew  when 
he  was  tired  and  discouraged ;  she  would  have  liked  to 
cheer  him.  She  sometimes  sewed  on  a  button  for 
Harry  Smith.  She  ordered  Levine  about  severely. 
She  did  not  like  either  of  them  half  as  much  as  she  did 
Isadore,  but  she  must  not  show  him  any  of  these 
womanly  attentions.  It  was  stupid  and  vexatious  that 
just  because  Isadore  loved  her,  she  must  be  carefully 
and  particularly  unfriendly  to  him. 

Paulding  was  raising  Yetta's  salary  among  his  per 
sonal  friends,  and  his  check  came  to  her  directly  with 
out  passing  through  the  general  treasury.  Her  work 
kept  her  out  of  the  office  most  of  the  time,  and  it  was 
not  until  her  second  year  that  she  chanced  to  be  at 
her  desk  on  a  Saturday  morning.  About  twelve-thirty 
Harry  Moore  came  in  from  the  composing-room, 


398  COMRADE  YETTA 

where  he  had  been  attending  to  the  lock-up.  He 
leaned  back  in  his  chair  and  stretched  wearily. 

"About  time  for  the  'ghost'  to  walk/'  he  said. 

"Not  much  of  a  ghost  this  week/'  the  pessimistic 
Levine  growled. 

A  few  minutes  later  Mary  Ames,  the  treasurer, 
bustled  in.  Her  face  was  round  and  unattractive; 
she  was  short  and  had  been  fat,  but  her  clothes  hung 
about  her  loosely  as  though  she  had  lost  much  flesh. 

"It's  a  bad  week,  Comrades,"  she  announced  cheer 
fully.  "Thought  I  wasn't  going  to  be  able  to  meet 
the  union  pay-roll  to-day.  Six  dollars  short.  But 
the  ten  o'clock  mail  brought  in  twenty.  Isadore  went 
out  and  touched  Mrs.  Wainwright  for  fifty,  and  Branch 
3  just  sent  in  eleven  from  a  special  collection.  So 
I've  seventy-five  for  you.  Who  comes  first?" 

"Locke's  wife  is  sick/'  Levine  said  mournfully. 

"That's  twenty  dollars,  isn't  it?"  Mary  said,  count 
ing  off  the  bills.  "And  you  know  Isadore  hasn't  had 
full  pay  for  months.  We  must  be  a  hundred  and  fifty 
back  on  his  salary." 

"Twenty-five  to  him,"  the  stenographer  said.  "It'll 
give  him  a  surprise." 

"Surprise?"  Levine  said  gloomily.  " It'll  give  him 
apoplexy." 

"That's  forty-five  gone,"  Mary  said.  "There's 
thirty  left." 

"How  much  do  you  need,  Nell?"  Moore  asked  the 
stenographer. 

"I'm  nearly  a  month  back  on  my  room  rent.  I'm 
in  a  bad  hole,  but  I  could  get  along  with  ten." 

"Oh,  make  it  fifteen,"  Harry  said.  "Girls  always 
need  money  for  ribbons  and  ice-cream  sodas." 


YETTA  TAKES  HOLD  399 

"That  leaves  fifteen  for  us,  Harry,"  Levine  wailed. 
"It's  what  I  call  a  dog's  life." 

"Oh,  cheer  up."  Moore  pocketed  the  fifteen  dollars. 
"Come  on  up  to  Sherry's  for  lunch.  —  It's  on  me." 

Linking  his  arm  in  Le vine's,  he  led  him,  still  grum 
bling,  out  of  the  office. 

Mary  Ames  sat  down  heavily  in  a  chair  and  began 
to  cry. 

"If  I  wasn't  so  ugly,"  she  said,  "I'd  just  like  to  kiss 
those  boys." 

She  shook  the  tears  out  of  her  eyes  and  jerked  her 
chair  up  towards  Yetta's  desk. 

"I  know  you  think  I'm  a  sentimental  old  flop  — 
crying  like  this.  You're  always  so  calm.  But  I 
can't  help  it.  You  might  think  I'm  discouraged  — 
rushing  round  all  week  begging  money,  and  every 
Saturday  morning  having  to  come  in  and  tell  the  boys 
I've  failed  —  that  I  haven't  enough  to  pay  their  sala 
ries.  But  it  isn't  discouragement  that  makes  me  cry, 
it's  just  joy  !  I  wouldn't  have  the  nerve  to  peg  through 
week  after  week  of  it  if  it  wasn't  for  being  the  ghost 
on  Saturdays.  It's  those  two  boys,  Levine  always 
grumbling  and  Harry  Moore  making  jokes.  And  — 
I  know  —  sometimes  they  don't  have  enough  to  eat. 
And  you  ought  to  see  the  hole  they  sleep  in  !" 

Her  lips  began  to  twitch  again,  and  perfect  rivers  of 
tears  ran  down  her  cheeks. 

"I  wish  I  could  stop  crying.  But  it's  just  too  won 
derful  to  work  with  people  like  this.  I've  been  a  book 
keeper  in  dozens  of  offices  —  everybody  selfish  and 
hating  each  other  and  trying  to  get  on.  I've  seen  so 
much  of  the  other.  It's  hard  for  me  to  believe  in  this. 

"I  don't  know  much  about  Socialism,"  she  went  on. 


400  COMRADE  YETTA 

"I  ain't  educated  like  you  young  people;  I  haven't 
read  very  much.  Keeping  books  all  day  is  all  my  eyes 
are  good  for.  But  I  just  know  it's  right.  If  it  wasn't 
the  real  thing,  there 'd  never  be  a  paper  like  this.  How 
can  you  sit  there  so  calm  and  cold  and  not  cry  ?  It's 
the  biggest  thing  in  the  world,  and  we're  part  of  it." 

Yetta  put  her  arms  about  the  older  woman. 

"I  love  it,  too,"  she  said.  "But  it  doesn't  make  me 
cry.  Somehow  it's  too  big  for  me.  It  matters  so 
little  whether  I'm  part  of  it  or  not.  It  would  go  on 
just  the  same  —  if  I  wasn't  here.  It  isn't  mine.  I 
could  cry  over  a  little  baby  —  if  it  was  mine.  But 
not  over  this  — " 

She  was  surprised  to  find  that  her  tears  were  con 
tradicting  her  words.  Once  started,  it  was  hard 
to  stop.  It  seemed  very  sad  to  her  that  a  young 
woman  of  twenty-three  should  have  nothing  more 
personal  to  cry  over. 


CHAPTER  XXIX 


WALTER'S  HAVEN 


WHILE  all  these  things  were  happening  to  Yetta, 
Walter  was  settling  down  into  the  rut  of  University 
life  easily  —  almost  contentedly.  He  was  employed 
to  be  a  scholar  rather  than  a  teacher.  And  while 
conducting  classes  is  always  a  dismal  task,  study  — 
to  one  with  any  bent  that  way  —  is  a  pleasant  occu 
pation.  He  was  not  dependent  on  his  salary,  and  so 
escaped  from  the  picturesque  discomfort  of  the  quar 
ters  assigned  to  him  in  the  mediaeval  college  building, 
to  a  "  garden  cottage."  There  was  a  lodge  in  front 
and  a  lawn  running  down  to  the  river  behind.  He 
had  found  an  excellent  cook,  who  was  married  to  an 
indifferent  gardener.  And,  although  his  lawn  was  not 
so  smooth  nor  his  grape  crop  so  plentiful  as  his  neigh 
bors',  he  was  very  pleasantly  installed. 

Sometimes,  of  course,  he  thought  regretfully  of  the 
might-have-been  life  in  New  York.  But  the  more  he 
studied  the  Haktites,  the  more  interesting  they  be 
came.  He  had  also  revived  his  project  of  a  Synthetic 
Philosophy. 

On  his  return  from  the  Christmas  holidays  of  his 
second  year  at  Oxford,  he  found  a  book  in  the  mail 
which  was  waiting  him.  It  was  a  novel  —  The  Other 

2o  401 


402  COMRADE  YETTA 

Solution,  by  Beatrice  Maynard.  It  had  been  sent  to 
his  old  New  York  address.  On  the  fly-leaf  she  had 
written,  "  Merry  Xmas."  It  was  an  unexpected 
pleasure  to  have  some  one  remember  him  at  this  holi 
day  season.  He  had  not  received  a  Christmas  present 
in  years. 

He  hurried  through  his  supper  to  begin  it.  Beyond 
occasionally  filling  his  pipe  he  did  not  stop  until  the  end. 

It  was,  he  decided,  just  such  a  book  as  he  would  have 
expected  her  to  write  !  There  was  the  patience  of 
real  art  in  the  way  it  was  done.  Not  a  great  book,  but 
packed  full  of  keen  observation,  and  its  finish  was 
like  a  cameo. 

It  was  a  simple  story  of  a  very  rich  girl  in  New  York. 
One  hardly  realized  that  it  was  about  the  Smart  Set. 
Beatrice  knew  her  people  too  well  to  have  any  illusion 
about  their  nobility  or  their  special  depravity.  The 
men  changed  their  clothes  rather  too  often,  but  were 
on  the  whole  a  kindly  meaning  lot.  The  women  were 
a  bit  burdened  with  their  jewellery,  but  very  human, 
nevertheless.  They  were  all  bored  by  their  uselessness. 
There  was  a  cynical  old  bachelor  uncle,  who  gave  the 
Girl  epigrammatical  advice  about  the  virtue  of  frivolity 
and  the  danger  of  taking  things  seriously.  There  was 
a  maiden  aunt  —  the  romance  of  whose  life  had  been 
shot  to  pieces  at  Gettysburg  —  who  had  sought  solace 
in  a  morbid  religious  intensity.  She  was  always  warn 
ing  the  Girl,  in  the  phraseology  of  Lamentations, 
against  light-mindedness  and  the  Wrath  to  Come. 
The  "  Other  Solution "  proved  to  be  a  very  modern 
kind  of  nerve  specialist,  whose  own  nerves  were  going 
to  pieces  because  of  overwork  and  the  cooking  of  an 
absinthe-drinking  Frenchwoman.  He  was  just  on  the 


WALTER'S  HAVEN  403 

point  of  beginning  to  take  cocaine,  when  Beatrice 
persuaded  him  to  take  the  Girl,  instead. 

"Good  work,"  Walter  said  as  he  closed  it. 

For  some  moments  he  sat  there  wondering  what 
sort  of  an  anchorage  Beatrice  had  found.  Such  a  book 
could  not  have  been  written  in  a  hurry  nor  in  un 
pleasant  surroundings.  He  had  never  heard  from  her. 
At  first  he  had  been  too  heavy  of  heart  to  care.  But 
as  the  months,  growing  into  years,  had  somewhat  healed 
his  hurts,  he  had  often  thought  of  her.  But  not  know 
ing  exactly  what  sort  of  memories  she  held  of  him,  he 
had  felt  that  if  the  long  silence  was  to  be  broken,  it 
should  be  done  by  her. 

He  was  glad  she  had  cared  enough  to  do  it.  He 
swung  his  chair  around  to  the  table  and  wrote  to  her. 
There  was  praise  of  the  book  and  thanks  for  the  re 
membrance.  In  a  few  paragraphs  he  gave  a  whimsical 
description  of  his  bachelor  establishment  and  of  his 
work,  and  asked  news  of  her.  He  addressed  it  in  care 
of  her  publishers,  a  London  house. 

A  few  days  later  her  answer  came  to  him  at  breakfast- 
time.  His  letter  had  caught  her  in  London,  where  she 
had  come  over  from  Normandy  to  arrange  about 
her  new  novel.  Could  he  not  come  up  to  town  dur 
ing  the  few  days  she  would  be  there  ?  If  he  wired, 
she  would  let  everything  else  slip  to  keep  the  appoint 
ment. 

He  sent  the  gardener  out  with  a  telegram  and  went 
up  on  an  afternoon  train.  It  was  tea  time  when  he 
found  her  in  the  parlor  of  her  hotel. 

"I  hope  I  haven't  begun  to  show  my  age,  as  you 
have,"  she  greeted  him. 

"  You  haven't." 


404  COMRADE  YETTA 

She  had  both  hands  busy  with  the  tea  things,  so  he 
could  find  no  opportunity  to  be  more  gallant. 

"I  see  by  your  note/'  she  said,  —  "is  it  two  lumps 
and  cream  or  three  and  lemon  ?  —  that  you  did  not 
follow  my  advice/7 

"No,  not  exactly.  Two  lumps,  please.  I  tried  to. 
I've  often  wondered  if  you  realized  what  irresponsible 
and  dangerous  advice  it  was." 

So  he  told  her  about  Yetta. 

"I  never  thought  she'd  be  such  an  idealistic  idiot," 
Beatrice  commented. 

"Of  such  are  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven." 

"Walter,  I  believe  you  were  in  love  with  her  and  did 
not  have  the  sense  to  say  so." 

He  waved  his  hands  as  a  Spaniard  does  when  saying, 
"Quiensdbef" 

"What's  your  news?"  he  asked. 

She  told  him  of  the  charming  little  village  she  had 
discovered  in  Normandy,  of  her  roses  and  poppies  and  of 
her  big  writing-room,  which  overlooked  three  separate 
backyards  and  gave  her  endless  opportunity  —  when 
the  ink  did  not  flow  smoothly  —  to  study  the  domestic 
life  of  her  neighbors.  What  fun  it  was  to  write  !  How 
happy  she  was  to  get  back  to  it  again  !  Altogether 
she  was  going  to  write  ten  novels,  each  one  was  to  be 
an  improvement,  and  the  last  one  really  good.  And 
then  the  Sweet  Chariot  was  going  to  swing  low  and 
carry  her  home. 

"I'm  getting  into  the  stride,"  she  said.  "  The  Other 
Solution  came  hard.  I'm  so  glad  you  liked  it.  I'd  go 
stale  on  it.  Have  to  lay  it  aside,  so  I've  three  coming 
out  close  together,  now.  I'm  just  finishing  the  proof 
of  number  two,  Babel.  It's  about  those  crazy  Trans- 


WALTER'S  HAVEN  405 

atlantiques  we  played  with  in  Paris.  And  the  next 
one  strikes  a  deeper  note.  I  think  I'll  call  it  The  Mess 
of  Pottage.  It's  almost  finished  —  a  couple  of  months' 
polishing.  I've  been  working  on  all  three  of  these 
at  the  same  time.  But  from  now  on  it's  one  a  year  — 
regularly." 

The  conversation  rambled  back  and  forth.  It 
jumped  from  the  criminal  code  of  the  Haktites  to 
Strauss'  Electra,  and  that  brought  them  to  Mrs.  Van 
Cleave,  whom  Beatrice  had  encountered  in  the  foyer  of 
the  Paris  Opera  at  Pelleas  et  Melisande.  Mrs.  Van 
Cleave  reminded  them  of  a  thousand  things.  The  two 
years  since  they  had  seen  each  other  fell  away,  the  old 
intimacy  returned.  Beatrice  suddenly  reverted  to 
Yetta. 

"  Don't  blame  me  if  you  muddled  things  up.  I  ad 
vised  you  to  marry  her  —  not  to  get  into  a  metaphysical 
discussion  with  her.  I'm  not  sure  but  you're  the  bigger 
fool  of  the  two.  'De  Vaudace  et  encore  de  Vaudace  et 
toujours  de  Vaudace.'  They  say  that  Danton  was  a 
successful  man  with  the  ladies." 

"The  answer  to  that  is,"  Walter  said,  "that  you 
write  your  next  novel  in  Oxford." 

"Oxford  !  Why,  a  university  town  is  no  place  for 
audacity! " 

"It's  the  place  for  you,"  he  said  decisively.  "To 
morrow  I'll  rent  the  cottage  next  to  mine  —  it's  bigger. 
I  noticed  a  'To  Let'  sign  on  it  this  morning.  It's  a 
love  of  a  place.  And  quiet !  There  isn't  a  corner  of 
Philadelphia  that's  as  quiet  Sunday  morning  as  Oxford 
is."  ' 

But  Beatrice  refused  to  consider  his  suggestion. 

"I'm  doing  very  well  as  I  am,  thank  you.     Having 


406  COMRADE  YETTA 

just  got  on  my  feet  at  last  —  no  more  entanglements 
for  me!" 

But  two  days  after  the  summer  recess  began,  Walter 
dropped  off  the  train  in  her  little  Norman  village. 

"It's  no  use  struggling,  Beatrice,"  he  said,  before 
she  had  recovered  from  her  surprise  at  his  invasion. 
"  You're  going  to  write  your  next  novel  in  Oxford. 
I've  rented  the  larger  house,  and  as  soon  as  the  French 
law  allows  we'll  get  married." 

"  Nonsense  !"  she  said. 

He  came  over  and  stood  in  front  of  her  chair  and 
talked  to  her  in  a  quiet  third  personal  tone  —  as  if  he 
were  the  family  lawyer. 

"B.,  here  we  are,  two  unattached  and  lonely  indi 
viduals  of  the  opposite  sexes.  You  said  that  morning 
in  Paris  that  we  were  a  sorry  couple  who  had  messed 
things  up  frightfully  and  wanted  to  cry.  Well,  we've 
got  a  bit  more  used  to  the  mess,  don't  want  to  cry  as 
much  as  we  did  —  but  —  well,  we  want  to  live. 

"I  was  a  fool  to  ask  Yetta  to  marry  me,  and  she  was 
very  wise  to  run  away.  After  all,  she  and  I  were  stran 
gers.  She  did  not  understand  me  any  more  than  I 
did  her.  She  was  in  love  with  a  very  nebulous  sort  of 
a  dream  —  which  I  didn't  resemble  at  all. 

"It's  different  with  us.  At  least  we've  'the  mess' 
in  common.  I  don't  know  whether  you've  tried  to 
forget  our  —  escapade.  I  haven't.  It  seems  to  me, 
when  I  think  of  it,  an  immensely  solemn  thing  —  a 
memory  I  want  to  treasure.  Somehow  out  of  our 
misery  a  sudden  understanding  and  sympathy  was 
born.  I'm  inclined  to  think  it  was  the  most  funda 
mental,  the  most  spontaneous  and  real  thing  that 
ever  happened  to  me.  I'd  chatted  with  you  half  a 


WALTER'S  HAVEN  407 

dozen  times,  had  had  only  one  real  talk  with  you  back 
in  New  York.  There  in  Paris,  in  two  minutes  —  no, 
it  was  a  matter  of  seconds  —  we  knew  each  other  better 
than  —  well  —  it's  hard  to  say  what  I  mean,  because 
I'm  not  much  of  a  mystic.  But  never  before  or  since 
have  I  experienced  a  deeper  feeling  of  nearness.  Two 
years  pass  without  a  word  exchanged,  and,  in  a  tawdry 
hotel  parlor  in  London,  with  a  string  of  people  walk 
ing  past  the  open  doors,  I  find  the  same  sudden  under 
standing. 

"I  don't  need  to  tell  you  that  there  in  London  I 
wished  the  people  were  not  walking  past  the  door,  that 
right  now  I  wish  your  bonne  would  disappear,  so  I 
could  — 

"But  I  don't  want  to  talk  about  that.  I'd  like  to 
get  over  something  a  lot  deeper.  It's  this  fundamental 
and  immensely  worth-while  agreement  and  sympathy. 

"And  just  because  I  have  this  conviction  of  under 
standing,  I'm  sure  you're  lonely,  too  —  just  as  lonely 
as  I  am.  We  both  of  us  have  a  desire  for  'the  accus 
tomed' —  for  Lares  and  Penates.  Even  an  escapade 
as  delightful  as  the  last  one  wouldn't  quite  satisfy 
either  of  us  any  more.  '  The  Other  Solution'  is  the  big 
house  in  Oxford  —  with  a  work-room  for  you,  a  study 
for  me,  and  the  other  rooms  for  us." 

He  shook  his  shoulders  as  though  to  shrug  off  his 
seriousness. 

"You  say  you  don't  want  to  get  married  again. 
That's  idiotic.  Haven't  you  lived  long  enough  to 
escape  from  fear  of  this  'marriage  bond'  bugaboo? 
With  all  your  talk  of  emancipation,  you're  still  as  con 
ventional  as  Mrs.  Grundy.  Marriage  will  save  us 
from  tiresome  ructions  with  the  neighbors,  but  as 


408  COMRADE  YETTA 

far  as  being  afraid  of  the  ceremony  —  why  —  I'd  just 
as  lief  marry  a  person  as  lend  her  ten  dollars. 

" Where  does  the  Maire  live?  I'll  go  down  and  tell 
him  to  dust  his  tricolor  sash." 

"No." 

"B.,  ilfaut  de  raudace." 

"It  would  be  foolish  after  Paris." 

"Et  encore  de  Vaudace  — " 

"Besides  I've  leased  this  cottage  for  two  years." 

"Et  toujours  de  Vaudace." 

"Well,"  she  said,  "if  you're  as  flippant  about  it  as 
all  that,  I  don't  suppose  it  matters  much." 


CHAPTER  XXX 

EVALUATION 

THE  first  two  years  on  The  Clarion  were  a  desperate 
struggle  for  Yetta.  But  after  all,  struggle  is  the  surest 
sign  of  life.  To  herself  she  seemed  dead.  The  col 
lapse  of  her  romance  had  left  a  hollow  place  in  her 
spirit,  which  could  not  be  filled  by  work  —  not  even 
the  frenzy  of  work  by  which  each  issue  of  The  Clarion 
was  achieved.  But  all  this  time  life  was  gathering  force 
within  her,  preparing  to  assert  itself  once  more. 

Our  literature  is  full  of  the  idea  of  Man,  the  Pro 
tector  — -  a  proposition  which  crumbles  before  the 
slightest  criticism.  The  protective  element  in  life  is 
overwhelmingly  feminine.  No  one  of  us  would  have 
survived  the  grim  dangers  of  childhood  except  for 
mothering.  Adult  men  —  even  though  unconscious 
of  it  —  are  pretty  generally  dependent  on  their  women 
folk. 

A  function  unused  surely  turns  into  an  ache.  Be 
cause  Yetta  felt  no  one  dependent  on  her,  life  seemed 
barren  and  painful.  The  outer  wrapper  of  herself  — 
the  hands  with  which  she  banged  out  copy  on  her  type 
writer,  the  feet  which  carried  her  about,  the  eyes  and 
ears  with  which  she  watched  and  listened  to  the  con 
flict  of  labor,  the  tongue  with  which  she  argued  and 

409 


410  COMRADE  YETTA 

pleaded  for  money,  the  brain  with  which  she  pondered 
and  planned  —  all  were  busy.  But  this  hurrying 
activity  did  not  touch  the  subtle  inner  substance  of 
herself.  For  this  there  was  only  the  barren,  empty  ache. 

Coming  downtown  one  night  from  a  union  meeting 
in  the  Bronx,  Yetta's  eye  caught  a  paragraph  in  the 
paper  which  told  that  David  Goldstein,  proprietor  of 
the  Sioux  Hotel,  who  had  been  shot  two  days  before 
in  a  gang  fight,  had  died  in  the  City  Hospital. 

It  was  the  first  Yetta  had  heard  of  her  relatives 
since  she  had  left  them.  She  stayed  on  the  car  until 
she  had  reached  the  centre  of  the  Ghetto.  A  policeman, 
who  was  standing  outside  the  Sioux  Hotel,  went  inside 
for  her  and  found  her  aunt's  address.  It  was  not  far 
off,  and  in  a  few  minutes  Yetta  found  herself  in  the 
dismalest  of  three-room  flats.  Half  a  dozen  dumb, 
miserable  old  women  sat  in  the  kitchen.  It  was  with 
some  difficulty  that  Yetta  made  out  which  was  Mrs. 
Goldstein. 

"Aunt  Martha,  don't  you  remember  me?"  she 
asked  in  Yiddish. 

But  Mrs.  Goldstein  was  too  dazed  to  reply.  From 
the  other  women,  Yetta  learned  that  her  aunt  was 
entirely  alone  and  penniless.  The  son  had  not  been 
seen  for  several  years.  Rosa  had  disappeared.  As 
soon  as  might  be  Yetta  drove  out  the  Kovna  lands  leit, 
and  when  they  were  gone,  she  knelt  down  beside  the 
old  woman. 

"  Don't  you  understand,  Auntie  Martha?  It's 
little  Yetta  come  back  to  take  care  of  you.  You 
won't  ever  have  to  worry  any  more.  I'll  take  care  of 
you." 

Tears  came  suddenly  to  the  old  woman,  the  first  in 


EVALUATION  411 

a  long,  long  time,  and  Yetta  got  her  to  bed.  Two 
decidedly  noisy  young  men  lodged  in  the  front  room. 
Yetta  was  rather  frightened;  it  took  her  a  long  time 
to  fall  asleep  in  the  stuffy  bedroom  beside  her  aunt. 

It  was  easy  to  reconstruct  the  process  by  which  the 
Goldstein  family  had  disintegrated.  Isaac  was  in 
prison.  Rosa  had  probably  gone  off  to  live  by  her 
self  —  tired  of  bringing  home  wages  for  her  father  to 
guzzle.  She  would  be  living  alone  in  some  dismal 
furnished  room.  She  had  been  too  poorly  endowed  by 
Nature  to  "go  wrong." 

But  despite  the  squalor  of  the  flat  and  the  heavy 
air  of  the  dark  bedroom,  Yetta  woke  up  with  a  new 
and  firmer  grip  on  life.  She  had  found  some  one  who 
needed  her.  The  first  of  the  next  month  she  moved 
her  aunt  to  a  flat  nearer  The  Clarion  office.  There 
were  four  rooms  and  a  bath.  The  parlor  she  rented 
to  Moore  and  Levine.  It  was  a  great  improvement 
for  them,  and  Mrs.  Goldstein's  cooking  was  less  ex 
pensive  and  more  nourishing  than  the  restaurant  fare 
on  which  they  had  been  subsisting.  Yetta  shared  the 
bedroom  with  her  aunt. 

The  metamorphosis  in  the  old  woman  was  startling. 
Yetta  remembered  her  as  a  very  unlovely  person, 
hardened  and  bitter.  It  had  been  a  reflection  of  her 
environment.  Now  in  clean  and  decent  surroundings, 
in  the  midst  of  those  who  treated  her  with  respect, 
under  the  sunshine  of  her  niece's  affection,  she  changed 
completely.  Yetta  was  continually  surprised  to  find 
how  much  her  aunt  reminded  her  of  her  father. 

The  struggle  in  the  office  was  as  intense  as  ever, 
but  now  Yetta  had  a  home.  Her  wounds  were  healing 
rapidly. 


412  COMRADE  YETTA 

Some  months  after  her  new  establishment  had  been 
founded,  Yetta  came  into  The  Clarion  office  and  found 
confusion.  Every  one  talked  at  once,  and  it  took 
some  minutes  to  get  a  connected  story.  Isadore  had 
caved  in.  For  several  days  he  had  been  rather  surly 

—  excusing  himself  on  the  ground  of  a  headache.     That 
morning  about  nine  o'clock  he  had  tumbled  out  of 
his  chair,  unconscious.     Dr.  Liebovitz  —  the  Comrade 
whom  Yetta  had  heard  speak  at  her  first  labor-meeting 

—  had  been  called  in.     He  had  pronounced  it  typhoid 
fever. 

"We  had  him  taken  up  to  our  room,"  Harry  Moore 
said;  "Levine  and  I  will  take  his.  It's  no  place  for 
a  sick  man.  And  besides,  when  the  nurse  goes,  your 
aunt  can  take  care  of  him." 

A  sort  of  helplessness  had  fallen  on  the  little  group, 
now  that  their  leader  was  stricken.  But  Levine  in 
this  crisis  changed  his  character  —  or  let  his  true 
character  shine  through  his  crust  of  pessimism.  He 
pushed  every  one  back  into  their  places  and  set  the 
wheels  going  again. 

When  the  forms  were  locked  up  and  the  next  day's 
assignment  made,  the  office  force  was  loath  to  separate. 
It  is  regrettable  that  the  virtues  of  our  friends  are 
like  our  kidneys  —  we  never  notice  them  till  some 
thing  goes  wrong.  For  the  first  time  they  were  realiz 
ing  what  a  tower  of  strength  Isadore  had  been.  As 
the  days  had  passed  they  had  more  often  been  im 
pressed  by  his  occasional  bursts  of  nervous  irascibil 
ity,  his  unaccountable  stubbornnesses.  He  had  walked 
about  among  them,  with  his  bent  shoulder,  his  wrinkled, 
lumpy  face,  as  far  removed  from  Mary  Ames'  senti 
mentality,  or  Harry  Moore's  flippant  optimism,  as 


EVALUATION  413 

from  Levine's  ingrowing  surliness.  His  most  salient 
characteristic  seemed  to  have  been  that  he  was  "  al 
ways  there. "  Now  he  was  gone. 

"He's  so  modest  and  simple/'  Harry  said,  "that 
we  never  noticed  how  strong  he  was." 

"I  wish  there  was  something  I  could  do  for  him/' 
Nell  sniffled. 

"Well,  I  guess  the  best  medicine  we  can  give  him," 
Yetta  said,  sticking  the  pin  in  her  hat  decisively,  "is 
to  report  every  week  that  the  circulation  has  jumped." 

The  accustomed  streets  were  a  blur  as  she  walked 
home.  The  idea  that  Isadore  was  sick,  helpless,  was 
as  disturbing  as  if  the  paper  had  announced  that  the 
Rock  of  Gibraltar  had  escaped  from  its  moorings  and 
was  floating  away. 

In  the  dining-room  she  found  her  aunt,  with  Jewish 
gloominess,  predicting  the  worst.  Yetta  went  down 
the  hall  and  knocked  lightly  at  the  parlor  door.  It 
was  opened  by  a  nurse.  The  room  was  darkened,  but 
she  caught  a  glimpse  —  which  was  to  stick  in  her 
memory  —  of  Isadore's  haggard  face  above  the  sheets. 
The  nurse  put  her  finger  to  her  lips  and  came  out  into 
the  hall. 

"It's  typhoid,  all  right,"  she  said. 

"Dangerous?" 

"It's  always  dangerous.  But  there  isn't  a  better 
doctor  in  the  city  for  typhoid  than  Liebovitz.  He'll 
be  in  again  in  a  few  minutes.  I'll  go  back  now." 

Yetta  stood  there  in  the  dim  hallway,  appalled, 
looking  more  closely  into  the  face  of  Death  than  she 
had  ever  done  before.  There  was  something  unbe 
lievable  in  the  thought  that  Isadore  might  die.  All 
the  fibres  of  her  strong  young  body  revolted  at  the  idea. 


414  COMRADE  YETTA 

But  beyond  the  closed  door  the  dread  fight  was  in 
progress.  The  pale  face  she  had  glimpsed  was  un 
conscious  of  it  all.  As  far  as  Isadore  was  concerned 
Death  had  already  won.  Liebovitz  and  the  nurse 
would  have  to  do  his  fighting  for  him. 

She  heard  her  aunt  admitting  the  doctor.  She  had 
never  seen  him  when  he  was  working  before.  With 
a  curt  greeting  he  strode  past  her  and  entered  the  sick 
room.  She  stood  in  the  doorway  unnoticed. 

"What's  the  temperature?" 

"105." 

There  was  a  string  of  questions  and  answers  given 
in  an  unemotional  tone.  They  seemed  almost  flippant 
to  Yetta,  impious,  in  the  face  of  the  great  tragedy. 
She  felt  hurt  that  he  did  not  do  something  at  once. 

At  last  Liebovitz  took  off  his  hat  and  turned  abruptly 
to  the  bed.  After  a  moment's  scrutiny  of  the  pa 
tient's  face,  he  turned  down  the  covers.  It  seemed  to 
Yetta  that  he  was  suddenly  transformed  into  a  pair 
of  Hands.  The  rest  of  him  melted  away.  His  half- 
shut  eyes  were  fixed  blankly  on  the  wall  as  his  wonderful, 
infinitely  sensitive  hands  played  about  Isadore's  heart. 
Then  he  knelt  down  and  became  an  Ear.  His  eyes 
were  quite  shut  now,  as  he  listened,  listened  —  the 
intense  strain  of  it  showing  on  his  rigid  face  —  to  the 
almost  inaudible  rumble  of  the  battle  raging  within  the 
sick  man's  chest.  Then  he  straightened  up,  the  mystic 
appearance  left  him ;  he  became  once  more  the  ordinary, 
cold-blooded  professional  man. 

"You've  a  telephone  ? "  he  asked  the  nurse.  "Good. 
You  can  get  Ripley  any  time  this  afternoon  if  you  need 
some  one  quick.  Call  me  up  at  the  Post  Graduate  at 
five  minutes  to  four.  I've  a  lecture  —  till  five.  I  can 


EVALUATION  415 

leave  it  if  necessary.  I'll  come  down  right  afterwards, 
anyhow." 

Yetta  tried  to  detain  him  in  the  hall  to  ask  about 
the  chances. 

"Too  busy  to  talk/'  he  said.  " Anyhow  I'm  no 
wizard.  I  can't  prophesy.  He's  pretty  sick.  But 
he'll  have  to  get  a  lot  sicker  before  we  let  go.  Really, 
I  can't  stop  now.  I've  got  a  confinement,  a  T.  B.  test, 
and  an  operation  before  four." 

Yetta  went  out  into  the  kitchen  and  set  her  aunt 
to  work  getting  supper  for  the  nurse.  Then,  feeling 
suddenly  very  tired,  she  went  to  her  room.  But  she 
could  not  sleep.  The  wonder  of  a  doctor's  life  had 
caught  her  imagination.  It  dizzied  her  to  try  to  real 
ize  what  it  must  mean  to  rush,  as  Liebovitz  was  doing, 
from  a  desperate  struggle  with  death  to  a  childbirth. 

Again  and  again  the  vision  came  back  to  her  of 
Isadore's  shrunken,  pallid  face. 

When  the  doctor  came  down  after  his  lecture,  Yetta 
asked  if  she  could  be  of  any  help  in  the  sick-room. 

"No,"  he  replied  shortly.  "You'd  only  use  up 
good  air." 

She  had  never  felt  so  useless  before  in  her  life.  The 
next  few  days  passed  —  in  dread.  Most  of  the  time 
she  spent  at  the  office.  She  had  taken  on  Isadore's 
editorial  work.  There  was  some  comfort  in  that. 
His  other  tasks  had  been  divided  between  Locke  and 
Moore  and  Levine.  A  big  strike  broke  out  in  the 
Allied  Building  Trades ;  it  meant  extra  work  —  but 
also  increased  circulation.  After  the  day's  grind, 
Yetta  came  back  to  the  hushed  home  where  the  great 
battle  was  being  fought  out  and  where  she  was  per 
force  a  non-combatant. 


416  COMRADE  YETTA 

There  were  a  hundred  questions  she  wanted  to  ask 
the  doctor,  but  he  was  generally  too  busy  to  talk.  One 
night  after  Isadore  had  been  sick  more  than  a  week 
Liebovitz  came  down  from  a  lecture  in  a  genial  mood. 

"I  hope  your  aunt  has  cooked  a  big  supper,"  he 
said.  "  Nothing  to  eat  at  home.  The  good  wife  is 
house  cleaning." 

"Well.  How's  it  going?"  Yetta  asked,  as  he  came 
out  of  the  sick-room  and  sat  down  to  a  plate  of  steam 
ing  noodle-soup. 

"We've  done  our  part.  It's  up  to  him  now.  We've 
pulled  him  through  the  regular  crisis.  If  he  don't 
take  it  into  his  head  to  relapse  and  if  he  really  wants 
to  get  well,  I  guess  he  will." 

He  answered  her  questions  in  monosyllables  until 
he  had  stowed  away  the  last  of  Mrs.  Goldstein's  cook 
ing.  Then,  lighting  a  cigarette  and  putting  three 
lumps  of  sugar  in  his  coffee,  he  began  joking  with  the 
old  woman  in  Yiddish.  But  Yetta  kept  interrupting 
him  with  more  questions. 

"You  want  to  know  what  I  think?"  he  said,  turn 
ing  to  her  severely.  "Well,  listen.  I  think  Isadore 
will  get  well.  I  hope  so.  It  wouldn't  do  any  good 
to  have  him  die.  None  of  you  people  would  read  the 
lesson.  But  he  don't  deserve  to.  For  ten  years  he's 
been  violating  all  the  rules  of  health  regularly.  You're 
all  intelligent  enough  to  understand  some  of  Nature's 
laws,  but  you're  too  utterly  light-minded  to  obey 
them  !  Isadore  started  out  with  a  wonderful  constitu 
tion  and  now  is  so  run-down  that  an  insignificant  little 
typhoid  germ  gets  into  his  mouth  and  nearly  kills  him. 
Good  God.  You  all  want  to  blame  the  germ.  But 
they  can't  do  any  harm  unless  you're  already  sick  — 


EVALUATION  417 

made  yourself  sick,  as  Isadore  has.  I'm  not  afraid  of 
them  —  my  business  takes  me  right  where  they  live. 
I'm  as  hard  as  nails.  And  you  ought  to  see  my  kids. 
They're  as  sound  as  I  am." 

"What  do  you  mean  by  his  making  himself  sick? 
Overwork?" 

"Overwork?  Thunder!  I  don't  get  as  much 
undisturbed  sleep  as  he  did.  I've  been  'overwork 
ing'  longer  than  he  has.  Work  doesn't  hurt  people 
—  not  if  they  are  living  sensibly.  You  people  —  all 
of  you  —  are  abnormal,  almost  hysterical,  in  your 
attitude  towards  life.  You  take  the  little  jobs  of  life 
too  seriously  and  aren't  serious  enough  about  the  big 
job  of  living. 

"Isadore  doesn't  realize  —  never  has  —  that  a  man 
needs  rest  and  relaxation.  He  doesn't  know  what 
play  means.  Treats  his  body  as  a  machine.  He 
ought  to  be  married.  Ought  to  have  a  wife  and  children 
to  think  about  besides  his  work  —  some  one  to  play 
with.  Some  one  to  beat  him  over  the  head,  if  neces 
sary,  to  distract  his  attention  from  the  rut  his  mind 
has  fallen  into.  He  thinks  too  much  over  the  genera 
tions  of  the  future,  not  enough  over  this  one  and  the 
next.  And  then  he  just  naturally  ought  to  have  a 
wife,  as  every  man  who  wants  to  be  normally  healthy 
does.  Living  like  a  monk  and  trying  to  do  a  real 
man's  work  !  But  what's  the  use  of  talking  ?  You 
won't  listen.  It'll  get  you,  too  —  just  as  sure  as  sun 
rise.  Then  you'll  come  yelping  to  me  to  help  you 
out." 

"Why,  I'm  well,"  Yetta  protested.  "I  don't  know 
any  one  in  better  condition  than  I  am." 

"Humph,"  he  snorted. 

2E 


418  COMRADE  YETTA 

He  finished  his  coffee,  and  getting  up,  stamped 
about  the  room  impatiently. 

"Yetta,  why  do  you  suppose  Nature  divided  the 
race  into  male  and  female  ?  For  more  millions  of  years 
than  we  can  count  Nature  has  been  at  work  making 
women,  shaping  their  bodies  by  minute  steps,  forming 
intricate  organs  within  them  —  for  a  special  task. 
Back  of  you  are  myriad  generations  of  females.  You 
wouldn't  be  alive  to-day,  you'd  never  have  been  born, 
if  a  single  one  of  them  had  neglected  her  woman's 
work.  Do  you  think  that  all  of  a  sudden  you  can 
break  this  age-old  habit  ?  That  you  can  waste  all  the 
pain  and  travail  of  your  myriad  mothers  with  impunity  ? 
You're  twenty-four  now.  For  more  than  five  years 
now  you've  been  thwarting  life,  rendering  barren  all 
the  vast  time,  the  appalling  agony,  the  ceaseless 
struggle,  it  has  cost  Nature  to  produce  you  —  with 
your  chance  to  pass  on  the  flame  of  life.  Out  of  all 
these  millions  of  mothers,  thousands  and  thousands 
have  given  their  life  that  the  line  might  be  preserved. 
It  doesn't  matter  at  all  what  reason  you  can  give  for 
not  having  had  children.  I  admit  there  are  a  few  good 
reasons.  But  Nature  is  insistent  in  this  matter  of 
the  next  generation  —  as  cold  as  a  sword's  edge.  It 
seems  almost  like  human  spite.  But  you  can't  blame 
her.  It's  such  appalling  waste  to  throw  away  all  the 
toiling,  suffering  generations  back  of  us.  You  can't 
expect  Nature  to  be  indifferent;  it  has  cost  her  so 
much.  And  she's  got  this  advantage  over  God,  her 
punishments  come  in  this  life.  Four,  five,  perhaps 
ten  years,  you  can  go  along  without  noticing  it.  Then 
you'll  come  to  me.  'I  have  headaches,  backaches. 
I'm  irritable.  I  don't  sleep.'  I  can  give  you  drugs 


EVALUATION  419 

to  deaden  the  headache,  dope  which  will  make  you 
seem  to  sleep.  I  can  ward  off  a  little  of  Nature's 
revenge  —  but  I  can't  cure  you.  There  are  plenty  of 
accidents  and  some  kinds  of  sickness  that  you  can't 
blame  a  person  for,  but  drying  up  into  barren,  un 
lovely  old  maidhood  ought  to  be  forbidden  by  law. 

"Lord,"  he  exclaimed,  looking  at  his  watch, " it's  late. 
I  promised  to  speak  at  a  Socialist  meeting  up  in  the  Bronx, 
but  I've  got  to  look  in  at  two  cases  first.  So  long." 

For  a  moment  Yetta  sat  still,  pondering  over  what 
the  doctor  had  said.  The  thing  which  impressed  her 
most  was  the  stupendous  idea  of  the  unbroken  line  of 
mothers  which  stretched  back  of  her  to  that  dim  epoch 
when  the  new  element  of  life  first  appeared  on  the 
shores  of  the  primordial  sea. 

But  in  thinking  back  about  it  in  after  years,  it  did 
not  seem  to  her  that  the  doctor's  talk  had  influenced 
her  very  much.  She  was  a  fearless  person  and  the 
threat  of  personal  ill-health  would  not  have  daunted 
her.  Her  feeling  towards  Isadore  had  already  changed. 

It  was  the  long  months  of  common  work  and  mutual 
aspirations  which  had  drawn  her  closer  and  closer  to 
him.  The  change  in  their  relationship  had  been  so 
gradual  that  it  needed  some  shock  to  open  her  eyes. 
The  sudden  realization,  the  day  he  had  fallen  sick, 
of  the  sharp  contrast  between  his  former  strength  and 
his  utter  weakness,  had  been  the  beginning.  At  first, 
when  she  saw  that  she  had  come  to  love  him,  it  had 
been  hard  to  believe.  But  the  day  after  the  crisis, 
while  helping  the  nurse  to  change  the  bed  linen,  she 
had  had  to  lift  him.  His  emaciation  had  appalled 
her.  And  in  his  delirium,  he  had  called  her  name. 
It  was  then  that  she  saw  clearly. 


420  COMRADE  YETTA 

One  night,  not  long  after  he  had  given  her  the  lec 
ture,  Liebovitz  came  out  of  the  sick-room. 

"He's  clear-headed  now,  and  he's  worrying  about 
the  paper.  Go  in  and  talk  to  him.  Give  him  good 
news  if  you  have  to  lie,  and  get  him  to  sleep." 

Isadore  opened  his  eyes  as  she  leaned  over  him  and 
smiled  when  he  recognized  her.  He  had  forgotten 
all  about  The  Clarion.  But  she  had  to  say  something 
to  keep  back  the  tears ;  it  was  so  painfully  wonderful 
to  mean  so  much  to  another. 

"The  circulation  has  gone  up  to  20,000." 

But  he  had  already  dropped  back  to  sleep  at  the 
bare  sight  of  her. 

It  had  not  been  a  lie.  The  circulation  was  growing 
steadily.  Isadore's  sickness  had  seemed  a  spur  to  the 
energy  of  every  one  connected  with  the  paper.  The 
news  that  he  was  recovering  had  given  them  all  a  new 
hope,  a  new  determination  to  put  it  on  a  firmer  basis 
against  his  return. 

Isadore  gradually  fought  his  way  back  to  life.  But 
it  was  a  long  and  dreary  convalescence.  There  was 
snow  on  the  ground  when  he  fell  sick.  Summer  had 
begun  in  earnest  before  he  was  able  to  walk  across  the 
room.  One  Saturday  afternoon,  Yetta  came  in  joyous 
and  found  him  stretched  out  on  the  lounge. 

"What  do  you  think,  Isadore?  When  the  ghost 
walked  to-day,  every  pay  envelope  was  full.  What  do 
you  think  of  that  ?  It  was  a  revolution.  Mary  Ames 
didn't  have  a  chance  to  cry,  and  Levine  couldn't  find 
anything  to  grumble  about .  They  were  both  unhappy. ' ' 

"I  don't  see  why  I  worked  so  hard  to  get  well," 
he  said  wearily.  "You're  getting  along  better  with 
out  me  than  when  I  was  there." 


EVALUATION  421 

"I  hope  you're  ashamed  of  yourself/'  she  said,  taking 
off  her  hat  and  sitting  down  beside  him.  "I  bring 
you  home  some  good  news  and  that's  all  the  thanks 
I  get." 

Isadore  blinked  his  eyes  hard,  but  in  spite  of  himself 
two  great  tears  escaped  down  his  cheeks. 

" What's  the  matter,  old  fellow?"  Yetta  asked  in 
dismay. 

"Oh,  nothing.  Only  I'm  so  foolishly  weak  still. 
Of  course  I'm  glad.  Only  it's  easy  to  get  discouraged." 
The  tears  escaped  all  control.  "It's  dreary  coming 
back  to  life." 

Above  all  other  advice,  Dr.  Liebovitz  had  insisted 
that  Isadore  should  not  be  excited.  But  Yetta  forgot 
all  about  that.  She  knelt  down  on  the  floor  beside 
him. 

"Isadore,  when  you  were  very  sick,  you  talked  a 
good  deal  in  your  sleep.  Do  you  know  who  you  talked 
about?" 

"You." 

"Is  it  just  the  same  as  ever,  Isadore?" 

" Far  immer  und  ewig"  he  said  slowly. 

Yetta  had  always  shared  her  father's  dislike  for 
Yiddish,  but  somehow  his  dropping  back  into  their 
mother-tongue  seemed  to  her  like  a  caress. 

"I  guess  that,"  he  went  on  in  the  same  language, 
"is  what  makes  it  seem  so  dreary  to  me  —  the  lone- 
someness." 

"Hush,  Isadore,"  she  said  breathlessly.  "You 
musn't  talk  like  that.  The  Pauldings  are  going 
to  Europe  this  summer.  They  told  me  you  could  go 
up  to  their  camp,  if  there  was  any  one  to  take  care  of 
you.  — I'll  go  with  you  —  we  won't  either  of  us  be  lonely 


422  COMRADE  YETTA 

any  more  —  Oh  Dear  Heart.  —  Oh,  it  isn't  anything  to 
cry  about  —  just  because  I've  made  up  my  mind  to 
marry  you.  Dr.  Liebovitz  will  give  me  an  awful 
scolding  if  he  finds  you  taking  on  so." 

A  Christian  Socialist  minister  married  them,  by  a 
ceremony  of  his  own  concoction.  It  was  quite  as  fan 
tastic  as  his  creed  —  but  at  least  it  was  legal.  As  soon 
as  Dr.  Liebovitz  would  allow  Isadore  to  be  moved, 
they  set  out  for  the  mountains. 


CHAPTER  XXXI 

YETTA    FINDS   HERSELF 

THE  first  days  in  the  woods  were  distressing  for 
Yetta.  The  strain  of  the  journey  had  prostrated  Isa- 
dore ;  she  was  afraid  he  was  going  to  have  a  serious  re 
lapse.  But  he  slept  off  the  fatigue  —  fourteen  and 
eighteen  hours  a  day  at  first.  And  he  soon  regained  his 
appetite.  They  got  fresh  milk  and  eggs  and  garden 
truck  from  a  near-by  farmer,  and  three  times  a  week  a 
man  came  in  a  boat  with  other  provisions  from  the  town 
at  the  foot  of  the  lake.  Isadore  began  to  put  on  flesh 
and  very  gradually  to  regain  his  strength. 

When  the  first  worry  was  over,  Yetta  entered  into  a 
period  of  perfect  peace.  The  conviction  which  had 
grown  on  her  gradually  —  unnoticed  at  first  —  that 
she  "  really  loved  "  Isadore,  solidified.  She  had  counted 
on  finding  it  pleasant  to  take  care  of  him ;  she  had 
found  it  so  in  the  city,  it  proved  unexpectedly  sweet 
here  in  the  woods.  In  New  York  she  had  been  only  an 
accident ;  a  dozen  others  could  have  nursed  him  just  as 
well.  Here  she  was  all  he  had.  Here  too  she  could 
give  all  her  time  to  him.  He  was  as  helpless  as  a  baby 
at  first,  and  submitted  docilely  to  her  loving  tyranny. 
She  had  never  "  kept  house  "  for  any  one  before.  In  the 
kitchen  of  the  little  cabin  —  walking  about  on  tiptoe, 

423 


424  COMRADE  YETTA 

so  as  not  to  disturb  his  health-bringing  sleep  —  she  found 
a  very  real  delight  in  the  new  experience  of  cooking  a 
meal  for  her  man,  in  washing  and  mending  his  clothes. 

Even  more  pleasant  to  her  was  the  utter  intimacy 
which  their  isolation  forced  on  them.  Whenever  he 
was  awake,  they  talked  —  of  everything  under  the  sun, 
except  The  Clarion.  They  had  agreed  to  forget  that. 
After  a  couple  of  weeks,  when  he  had  grown  a  little 
stronger,  she  read  to  him.  She  found  it  embarrassing 
at  first,  almost  as  if  it  were  immodest.  She  had  never 
read  aloud  before.  The  joy  of  books  had  been  some 
thing  entirely  individual.  She  was  unaccustomed  to 
launch  out  on  the  adventure  of  a  new  point  of  view  in 
company.  But  after  the  first  diffidence  had  worn  off, 
it  proved  an  undreamed-of  delight.  Now  and  again  one 
or  the  other  would  interrupt  the  reading  to  think 
out  loud.  "  Let's  hear  that  again,"  he  would  say.  Or, 
"I  must  read  that  passage  over.  Isn't  it  fine?"  she 
would  break  out. 

Almost  all  of  Isadore's  reading  had  been  historical  or 
scientific.  He  had  no  idea  of  grace  in  writing.  ' i  Force  " 
and  " Truth"  were  the  only  literary  qualities  he  recog 
nized.  Meredith,  who  had  been  one  of  Yetta's  favorites 
rather  weakened  under  his  incisive  criticism.  Zola's 
" Labor"  they  both  liked.  Poetry  generally  went 
wrong.  Swinburne,  whose  luxurious  music  hypnotized 
Yetta  past  all  comprehension  of  what  he  was  talk 
ing  about,  disgusted  Isadore  — •  until  Yetta  came  to 
"The  lie  on  the  lips  of  the  priests  and  the  blood  on  the 
hands  of  the  Kings." 

" That's  good  business,"  Isadore  said.  "Why  didn't 
he  stick  to  that  style?" 

It  was  the  other  way  round  with  Henley.     He  fared 


YETTA  FINDS  HERSELF  425 

better  at  first.  Isadore  liked  the  hospital  verses.  But 
when  they  came  to  "I  am  the  master  of  my  fate,  I  am 
the  captain  of  my  soul,"  Isadore  revolted. 

"Do  you  really  suppose  he  believed  that  rot?" 

"  Of  course,"  Yetta  said.     "  Don't  you  ?  " 

"Not  for  a  minute.  You've  been  the  master  of  my 
fate  these  last  few  years." 

Naturally  Yetta  forgave  him  for  disagreeing  with 
Henley. 

But  there  was  a  cloud  in  the  sky  —  even  these  deli 
cious,  peaceful  days.  Yetta  vaguely  dreaded  the  time 
when  Isadore  would  be  quite  well.  She  was  no  longer 
the  unsophisticated  girl  who  had  promised  to  live  with 
Harry  Klein  without  knowing  what  it  meant.  She 
knew  it  was  impossible  to  continue  this  pleasant  rela 
tionship  of  nurse  and  patient.  Sooner  or  later  he  would 
revolt  from  his  role  —  he  would  want  something  quite 
different  from  nursing. 

Contrary  to  her  custom  Yetta  did  not  face  this  situa 
tion  frankly.  She  tried  to  avoid  thinking  of  it.  When 
it  forced  itself  on  her,  she  told  herself,  "Of  course  I 
want  children."  Almost  every  time  she  had  heard  this 
business  of  maternity  referred  to,  its  painful  side  had 
been  emphasized.  She  had  heard  a  great  deal  about  the 
"heroism  of  motherhood."  Her  attitude  towards  the 
sexual  side  of  marriage  was  very  like  her  attitude  to  the 
dentist.  And  no  matter  how  firmly  we  have  decided  to 
go  to  the  dentist,  we  are  a  bit  reluctant  about  starting. 
Yetta  did  what  she  could  to  postpone  the  duty  she  had 
firmly  decided  to  perform  stoically  and  gamely. 

She  really  thought  about  this  matter  surprisingly 
little.  All  she  had  read  in  the  poets  about  the  joys  of 
passionate  love  she  thought  of  as  romantic,  and  she 


426  COMRADE  YETTA 

was  in  full  reaction  against  romance.  In  real  life  she 
had  never  encountered  any  one  who  even  remotely  re 
sembled  Heloise  or  Francesca  or  Melisande  or  the 
Queen  Isolde.  The  married  women  she  knew,  the 
mothers  of  children,  did  not  give  any  sign  of  such 
dizzying  emotions. 

The  reality  of  love  she  had  decided  was  a  spiritual 
matter.  The  night  Isadore  had  kissed  her  in  the  dark 
of  the  office,  she  had  been  too  frightened  to  appreciate 
it  as  a  caress.  He  had  never  stirred  her  emotions  as 
Walter  had.  She  was  not  afraid  to  think  of  them  both 
at  the  same  time  any  more.  She  calmly  knew  that 
her  love  for  Isadore  was  the  more  real.  But  still  she 
could  not  look  forward  to  his  complete  recovery  with 
out  a  slight  tremor. 

When  Isadore  seemed  on  the  point  of  talking  about 
this,  she  adroitly  changed  the  subject.  She  always 
came  to  his  room  to  kiss  him  "good  night, "  and  the  first 
thing  in  the  morning  after  she  was  dressed  she  came  to 
his  bedside  and  kissed  him  "good  morning."  But  al 
though  she  was  naturally  demonstrative,  she  carefully 
avoided  any  disturbing  caresses. 

As  Isadore  gained  strength  the  crisis  inevitably  ap 
proached.  One  moonlight  night,  out  on  the  Lake  in 
their  guide  boat,  Isadore,  who  had  been  lazily  rowing, 
rested  on  his  oars. 

"Yetta,"  he  said.  "Sometimes  I  have  a  horrible 
thought —  I  wonder  if  you  really  love  me." 

Yetta,  stretched  out  on  the  cushions  in  the  stern- 
sheets,  had  been  perfectly  happy  —  at  least  as  happy  as 
she  knew  how  to  be  —  before  he  spoke.  She  knew  at 
once  what  he  meant,  and  it  troubled  her. 

"Why,  what  do  you  mean  ?"  she  said,  to  gain  time. 


YETTA  FINDS  HERSELF  427 

"I  wonder  if  you  know  what  it  means  —  what  love 
means  —  to  a  man  ?  " 

"I  know  what  it  means  to  a  well  man,"  she  said. 

Isadore  began  rowing  again.  Of  course  Yetta  did 
not  know  what  love  means  to  a  well  man.  She  knew 
that  she  did  not  know.  She  was  shocked  at  herself  for 
the  spirit  of  hostility  which  had  shown  in  her  answer. 

"Isadore,"  she  said  in  a  few  minutes,  "dearest,  I 
love  you  very,  very  much.  Aren't  you  content?  It 
seems  so  sweet  to  me,  just  to  be  together  like  this. 
Aren't  you  content  ?" 

Isadore  —  like  many  men  of  his  race  —  was  instinc 
tively  wise  in  regard  to  women.  He  did  not  have  to 
think  over  his  reply. 

"No,"  he  said  laconically. 

He  rowed  on  in  silence  for  several  minutes.  He  did 
not  understand,  but  he  sensed,  Yetta's  trouble.  She 
was  trembling  on  the  threshold  of  the  Great  Mystery. 
When  he  spoke  again,  it  was  to  calm  and  reassure  her. 
Ashore,  they  sat  for  a  long  time  in  the  moonlight,  hand 
in  hand.  He  did  nothing  to  frighten  her,  and  she  felt 
flooded  by  his  tenderness. 

A  week  later  he  brought  up  the  subject  again.  They 
had  climbed  a  mountain  in  the  morning.  To  be  sure, 
it  was  a  small  one,  but  still  a  mountain.  He  had  slept 
most  of  the  afternoon.  When  supper  was  over,  she 
read  to  him  a  while,  and  then  sent  him  to  bed.  When 
she  came  to  his  room  to  kiss  him  "good  night,"  he  put 
his  arms  about  her  and  —  as  though  to  show  that  he 
was  really  strong  again  —  he  crushed  her  tightly  in  his 
embrace. 

"Dearie,"  he  said.  "Is  your  name  Yetta  or  Not- 
yetta  ?  " 


428  COMRADE  YETTA 

"Not-quite-yet-ta,"  she  panted. 
*  *  *  *  *  *  * 

The  black  fly  season  had  passed,  the  leaves  had  begun 
to  turn,  before  they  packed  up  their  meagre  belongings 
to  go  back  to  the  city  and  work.  It  had  commenced 
to  get  cold,  but  on  their  last  day  the  sun  came  out  as  if 
it  were  July. 

They  rowed  across  the  lake  to  bid  farewell  to  a  great 
pine  tree  they  had  come  to  love.  It  stood  alone  on  a 
little  promontory,  a  hundred  feet  above  the  water.  Its 
mates  had  fallen  before  the  storms.  Its  loneliness 
emphasized  its  magnificent  grandeur.  There  was  a 
rich  cushion  of  needles  at  its  foot,  and  the  view  across 
the  lake  was  exquisite. 

The  last  month  of  their  stay  in  the  woods  had  been 
a  veritable  honeymoon.  There  was  no  spot  on  the  lake 
so  closely  associated  with  their  ardent  emotions  as 
this  giant  pine  tree.  Many  times  during  the  hot  spell  of 
August  they  had  brought  rugs  and  pillows  and  spent  the 
night  at  its  foot  —  bathing  in  the  water  below  at  sunrise. 

When  they  had  moored  their  boat  and  clambered  up 
the  steep  bank,  Isadore  sat  down,  leaning  against  the 
trunk  of  their  tree.  Yetta  stretched  out  on  the  carpet 
of  pine  needles  and  rested  her  head  on  his  knee.  Isa 
dore  ran  his  hand  through  her  hair  and  now  and  again 
caressed  her  cheek.  For  some  time  they  were  silent  — 
both  rather  oppressed  by  the  idea  that  on  the  morrow 
they  must  go  back  to  the  city.  They  would  no  longer 
be  alone  together ;  much  of  this  dear  intimacy  would 
have  to  be  sacrificed  to  work. 

Yetta  suddenly  turned  and  looked  up  into  his  face. 

"Ib,"  she  began.  This  name  which  she  had  con 
cocted  out  of  his  initials  —  in  spite  of  its  absurdity  — 


YETTA  FINDS  HERSELF  429 

had  the  most  tender  connotation  of  any  word  in  their 
vocabulary  a  deux  —  "Ib,  there  is  something  I  want  to 
tell  you." 

And  then  she  stopped.  Isadore,  impressed  her  by 
seriousness,  waited  patiently  for  her  to  speak. 

"It's  hard  to  find  words  for  it,"  she  went  on  at  last. 
"But  I  want  you  to  know  that  I've  been  happier  these 
weeks  than  I  ever  dreamed  any  one  could  be.  This  —  " 
their  vocabulary  a  deux  had  many  lacunae — -"It's 
been  so  different  from  what  I  expected.  It  isn't  that 
I  was  afraid  —  only  I  was  a  little.  I  didn't  think  love 
would  be  like  this.  You  see  I  hate  to  darn  my  own 
stockings  —  but  I  really  enjoy  darning  yours.  I  guess 
that's  inherently  feminine.  No  service  is  really  un 
pleasant  when  it's  for  the  one  we  love.  And  I  was  ready 
to  do  any  service  for  you  —  gladly.  Can  you  under 
stand  what  I'm  trying  to  say?  Well.  It's  been  a 
surprise  —  a  dizzying,  joyous  surprise.  It  isn't  a  ser 
vice  at  all.  It's  —  "  Once  more  words  failed  her. 
"You  remember  one  night  you  asked  me  if  I  really 
loved  you.  I  thought  I  did  then.  I  didn't  know  what 
I  was  talking  about.  But  now  —  now  that  I  know"  — 
she  brushed  the  foolish  tears  out  of  her  eyes  and  reached 
up  her  hand  to  his  cheek  —  "I  really,  really  love  you. 

"Please.  I  don't  want  to  be  loved  just  now.  I 
want  to  talk. 

"What  bothers  me,"  she  went  on  in  a  moment, 
"is  that  I  was  ignorant.  Why?  Why  didn't  I  know 
about  this  ?  I  knew  about  the  physiology  of  love,  but 
that  is  only  so  very  little  of  it.  I'd  read  For  el ;  every 
body  says  that  is  the  best  book  on  sex.  But  that  did 
not  tell  me.  I've  talked  with  a  few  women.  They 
either  haven't  said  anything  or  they've  been  hostile  — ' 


430  COMRADE  YETTA 

they  spoke  of  the  'burden  of  sex'  or  of  ' woman's 
sacrifice  to  man.'  Why  did  not  some  one  tell  me  the 
truth,  so  that  I  would  not  have  been  dismayed? 
So  I  might  have  been  altogether  glad?  It  seems  so 
evident  that  ignorance  is  bad  —  and  dangerous." 

"Of  course  it's  dangerous,"  he  replied.  " There  is 
only  one  thing  more  dangerous  than  ignorance  —  that's 
misinformation.  That's  where  young  men  suffer. 
I've  thought  about  this  a  lot,  Yetta.  It's  hideous. 
Long  before  any  one  ever  told  me  anything  that  was 
true,  I  had  learned  so  much  that  was  false.  Men 
learn  their  first  lessons  of  sex  from  women  —  poor, 
pallid  women  who  have  never  known  what  love  was. 
It  doesn't  matter  whether  a  boy  goes  to  them  or  not. 
Indirectly,  if  not  directly,  he  learns  their  lore.  The 
older  boys  who  tell  him  about  women  have  learned 
from  them. 

"  Prostitution  is  the  blackest  blot  on  this  civiliza 
tion  we  Socialists  are  trying  to  overthrow.  In  spite 
of  the  hypocrisy  which  tries  to  ignore  its  existence  it  is 
just  as  fundamental  an  institution  as  the  churches  and 
armies.  Present  society  could  not  exist  without  these 
women  any  more  than  it  could  without  its  warships  and 
worships.  It's  hideous  in  so  many  ways.  But  the 
point  we  don't  hear  about  so  often  is  that  these  women, 
whom  we  despise  and  consistently  degrade,  are  the 
teachers  who  instruct  our  youth  in  this  business  of 
sex.  It  is  the  holiest  thing  in  life.  Its  priestesses 
are  the  most  polluted  class  in  the  community.  Not 
that  I  blame  them.  They  are  victims.  But  they 
get  their  revenge  —  a  horrible  revenge. 

"Our  girls  are  kept  in  ignorance  about  sex.  It's  very 
few  of  them,  Yetta,  who  have  read  a  book  like  Forel's. 


YETTA  FINDS  HERSELF  431 

And  the  boys  are  sent  to  school  in  the  brothels.  Most 
brides  come  to  this  business  of  sex,  thinking  of  it  —  a 
bit  timorously  —  as  a  Great  White  Sacrifice  to  Love. 
Most  men  think  of  sex  as  the  climax  of  a  spree.  That 
any  such  marriages  are  happy  is  a  wonder  to  me." 

"But  why  doesn't  some  one  have  the  courage  to  tell 
the  truth?"  Yetta  exclaimed. 

" It  isn't  as  simple  as  that,"  he  replied.  " It  isn't  so 
much  a  question  of  courage  as  it  is  of  ability.  You,  —  if 
a  young  woman  asked  you,  —  could  you  tell  her  ?  I 
couldn't  if  a  boy  asked  me.  I  could  tell  him  about  the 
mechanism  of  sex  —  just  as  Forel  and  a  dozen  writers 
have  done.  There  are  plenty  of  technical  words.  But 
I'd  have  to  stop  there.  The  reality  can't  be  expressed 
in  scientific  language  —  and  the  gutter  words  are  false 
when  you  talk  of  love.  I'll  warrant  that  you  wouldn't 
like  to  tackle  the  job." 

"It  would  be  hard,"  she  admitted.  And  then  — 
"But  isn't  there  any  hope  ?  Must  there  always  be  this 
misunderstanding  ?  " 

"Oh,  no!  At  first,  with  primitive  man,  there  wasn't 
any  such  misunderstanding  —  there  was  just  lack  of 
understanding.  Love  is  such  a  new  thing  in  the  history 
of  life  that  we  are  just  vaguely  beginning  to  under 
stand  it.  Man  —  we  say  —  is  an  animal  who  has 
gained  consciousness  of  self.  But  this  did  not  happen 
suddenly.  It  must  have  taken  thousands  and  thou 
sands  of  years.  The  process  is  not  yet  complete.  Out 
of  general  consciousness  the  animal  that  was  becoming 
man,  gradually,  in  one  point  after  another,  won  self- 
consciousness.  Gradually  sex  became  a  little  more 
than  the  simple  reflex  act  that  we  see  in  the  lower 
animals  to-day  —  forgotten  as  soon  as  accomplished. 


432  COMRADE  YETTA 

It  was  not  until  what  we  call  the  Middle  Ages  that  man 
became  conscious  of  something  more  in  love  than 
physical  passion.  The  love  affairs  of  Mary,  Queen  of 
Scots,  would  seem  very  unspiritual  to  us  to-day.  And 
think  how  very  recent  that  was  compared  to  the  date 
of  the  Stone  Age.  It  was  only  in  the  last  century  that 
the  romantic  idea  took  possession  of  literature.  Like 
all  new  ideas  it  was  full  of  extravagances.  Now  we 
call  ourselves  Realists  —  the  necessary  reaction.  But 
there  is  more  of  the  new  spirit  of  love  in  Zola  than 
Shakespeare  ever  dreamed  of.  I  doubt  if  he  would 
recognize  a  modern  production  of  Romeo  and  Juliet 
any  more  than  Christ  would  recognize  his  service  in  a 
High  Mass. 

"As  we  begin  to  get  used  to  this  startlingly  new 
concept  of  love,  we'll  develop  the  words  to  express  it. 
It's  too  big  a  task  to  be  accomplished  by  one  brain 
or  one  generation." 

They  fell  silent  again.  Yetta,  looking  off  across  the 
lake,  —  unconscious  of  the  beauty  of  the  view,  —  was 
thinking  desperately  of  this  matter  of  love,  and  was 
realizing  with  pain,  as  all  who  try  to  write  must  do, 
her  utter  inability  to  express  what  this  Mystery  of  Love 
meant  to  her.  She  could  not  even  tell  Isadore. 

Her  girlish  romance  about  Walter  seemed  to  her  now 
almost  as  empty  as  her  affair  with  Harry  Klein.  She 
had  at  first  given  herself  to  Isadore  on  a  rather  in 
tellectual  basis.  She  knew  him  profoundly  before  she 
had  married  him.  She  had  been  quite  sure  of  a  life  of 
loving  comradeship  and  mutual  understanding.  From 
a  matter  of  fact,  work-a-day  point  of  view  the  marriage 
was  to  be  as  satisfactory  as  she  could  imagine.  And 
to  all  this  had  been  added  an  unexpected  element  —  this 


YETTA  FINDS  HERSELF  433 

mystic,  unexpressible  joy  of  sex.  Yetta  had  the  sense 
to  know  that  she  was  fortunate  above  most  women. 
She  looked  up  at  the  dear  face  above  her,  hoping  to  find 
some  gesture  to  express  the  overflowing  happiness  for 
which  she  could  find  no  words.  She  was  struck  by  the 
look  of  intense  thought  on  his  face. 

"What  are  you  thinking  about,  Ib?" 

He  started,  as  he  came  back  from  his  revery. 

"I've  been  thinking/'  he  said,  "that  we'll  have  to  be 
awfully  tactful  when  we  get  back  to  the  office.  Smith 
and  Levine  have  been  running  things  so  long  by  them 
selves  that  it's  only  human  for  them  to  be  a  bit  jealous 
about  our  coming  back." 

These  words  caused  a  very  complicated  mix-up  in 
Yetta's  mind. 

The  hereditary  woman  in  her,  the  part  of  her  which 
was  formed  by  the  myriad  wives  who  had  been  her 
ancestors,  shuddered  as  though  under  the  lash  at  the 
idea  that  on  this  very  last  day  his  thoughts  had  gone  so 
far  away.  Every  cell  in  her  brain  had  been  intent  on 
him.  She  had  just  decided  that  no  one  had  ever  loved 
any  one  as  much  as  she  loved  him  —  and  he  had  been 
thinking  of  the  office.  A  tidal  wave  of  tears  started 
instinctively  towards  her  eyes. 

But  all  that  was  modern  about  Yetta,  all  that  part  of 
her  which  had  learned  to  reason,  was  suffused  with 
tenderness,  as  the  other  part  of  her  would  have  been 
by  a  caress.  She  was  proud  of  the  single-minded  devo 
tion  of  her  man.  She  was  not  surprised  at  the  tangent 
along  which  his  thoughts  had  flown.  She  had  the  im 
mense  advantage  over  most  brides,  that  she  knew  her 
husband.  She  knew  the  depth  of  sincerity  which  was 
sometimes  obscured  by  his  pedantic  phrases.  She 

2F 


434  COMRADE  YETTA 

had  learned  to  love  him.  She  had  been  spared  the  pain 
of  discovering  a  reality  back  of  a  dream  of  love.  The 
only  new  thing  she  had  learned  about  him  since  their 
marriage  was  the  wealth  of  tenderness  back  of  his 
rather  rough  exterior,  —  the  gentle  consideration  that 
lay  under  his  rugged  manners,  —  the  undreamed-of 
sweetness  which  was  hidden  to  most  eyes  by  his  evident 
force.  She  was  not  disillusioned  by  intimacy. 

For  a  few  minutes  she  let  him  talk  about  the  work 
that  was  awaiting  them.  She  was  as  much  interested 
in  it  as  he.  But  at  last  the  hereditary  woman  within 
her  reminded  her  that  after  all  this  was  their  last  day 
of  solitude.  She  stopped  listening  to  him  and  consid 
ered  the  matter  from  this  point  of  view  for  a  moment. 
Then  she  shamelessly  interrupted  him  in  the  midst  of  a 
ponderous  sentence. 

"Ib,"  she  said,  "I  love  you." 

They  had  been  back  in  the  city  many  months  before 
their  faces  lost  the  mark  of  the  sun.  In  due  course  of 
time  Comrade  Yetta  Braun  qualified  to  edit  the 
''Mother's  Column." 


CHAPTER  XXXII 

OLD  FRIENDS  MEET  —  AND  PART 

FOUR  years  after  their  marriage  Yetta  and  Isadore 
received  a  tangible  token  of  the  respect  in  which  they 
were  held  by  their  Comrades.  They  were  chosen  among 
the  delegates  to  the  International  Socialist  Congress 
which  was  to  meet  in  London.  No  one  who  is  not  an 
active  worker  in  the  Socialist  party  can  appreciate 
how  much  this  election  means  to  the  Comrades.  Every 
three  years  the  party  has  to  choose  half  a  dozen  of  its 
members  as  most  worthy  to  represent  them  in  the 
international  councils.  It  is  a  real  honor. 

They  were,  after  their  four  years  of  unremitting  work 
on  The  Clarion,  in  need  of  a  vacation.  They  had  not 
had  one  since  their  honeymoon  in  the  woods.  But, 
except  for  the  eight  lazy  days  in  the  second  cabin  of  a 
slow  steamer,  they  found  very  little  rest  at  the  Con 
gress.  Besides  the  regular  sessions,  so  much  time  went 
to  getting  acquainted  with  the  European  Comrades, 
whose  names  they  had  long  revered,  whose  books  they 
had  read.  It  took  a  big  effort  to  escape  long  enough  to 
have  a  look  at  the  Houses  of  Parliament  and  the 
Abbey.  That  was  all  the  sight-seeing  they  did  in 
London. 

The  next  to  the  last  day,  when  Yetta  reached  her 

435 


436  COMRADE  YETTA 

seat  in  the  convention  hall,  she  found  a  letter  on  her 
desk.     She  did  not  at  first  recognize  the  handwriting. 

"  DEAR  YETTA. 

I  suppose  you've  quite  forgotten  me.  But  try  to  re 
member. 

Can't  you  and  Isadore  come  down  to  Oxford  for  a 
few  days  after  the  Congress  ?  Walter  noticed  your 
name  in  the  paper  among  the  delegates.  We  are  both 
anxious  to  renew  the  old  friendships.  When  can  we 
expect  you  ? 

Sincerely, 

BEATRICE  LONGMAN." 

Yetta  was  glad  that  Isadore  had  been  detained  in  the 
corridor.  She  put  the  letter  in  her  pocket  before  he 
joined  her.  All  day  long  this  invitation  was  flitting 
back  and  forth  from  the  back  of  her  brain  to  the  front. 
In  every  moment  of  half  leisure  she  thought  about  it, 
and  more  and  more  she  wanted  to  go.  It  was  partly 
curiosity  to  see  what  sort  of  a  life  Walter  had  made  for 
himself,  partly  a  desire  to  exhibit  her  own  happiness. 
She  did  not  want  him  to  think  she  was  still  broken 
hearted.  And  it  was  partly  a  very  real  tenderness  for 
these  old  friends  who  very  long  ago  had  meant  so  much 
to  her.  But  it  was  not  until  they  were  alone  together 
in  their  modest  hotel  room  at  night  that  she  spoke  to 
Isadore  about  it. 

"Oh,  I  forgot.  Here's  a  letter  that  came  from  Mrs. 
Longman.  —  You  remember  she  used  to  be  Mrs. 
Karner." 

"  Well,"  he  said,  when  he  had  read  it,  " that's  simple. 
We're  too  busy." 


OLD  FRIENDS  MEET  — AND  PART  437 

"But  I'd  like  to  see  them  again." 

"You  would?"  he  asked  in  surprise  —  and  a  little 
hurt.  "  All  right ;  of  course,  if  you  want  to.  I've  got  to 
rush  back.  But  there's  no  reason  why  you  shouldn't 
stay." 

" Don't  be  foolish,  dear,"  she  said.  "You  know  I 
won't  stay  a  minute  longer  than  you.  I  wouldn't 
think  of  going  alone.  We  could  leave  here  after  lunch 
Thursday  and  stay  in  Oxford  for  dinner  and  catch  our 
boat  all  right.  You  see,  dearest,  it's  sort  of  like  dying 
never  to  see  people  who  meant  so  much  once.  You 
don't  know  how  much  I  grieve  about  Mabel.  She  was 
my  first  friend  —  the  first  real  friend  I  ever  had.  It 
was  my  fault  that  we  quarrelled.  I  wouldn't  like  to 
feel  that  it  was  my  fault  if  I  lost  all  touch  with  Walter 
and  Mrs.  Karner  —  I  mean  Mrs.  Longman.  They've 
asked  us  to  come  in  a  friendly  spirit.  I  think  we  ought 
to  go." 

"Very  well,"  he  said.  "Wire  that  we'll  come. 
But  it  sounded  to  me  like  a  sort  of  duty  note  —  not 
exactly  cordial." 

As  a  matter  of  fact  it  had  not  been  in  an  entirely 
cordial  spirit  that  Beatrice  had  written. 

One  morning  Walter,  who  very  rarely  disturbed  his 
wife  when  she  was  writing,  knocked  at  the  door  of  her 
work-room. 

"May  I  interrupt  a  minute,"  he  asked  apologetically. 

"What  is  it?"  she  asked. 

He  came  over  and  laid  a  newspaper  on  her  table, 
pointing  halfway  down  a  column  which  was  headed, 
"International  Socialist  Congress."  Among  the  names 
of  the  delegates  from  the  United  States  were  those  of 
Isadore  and  Yetta  Braun. 


438  COMRADE  YETTA 

" You'd  like  to  have  me  invite  them  out  here?"  she 
asked. 

"Yes,  if  it  isn't  inconvenient.  I'd  like  to  see  them 
again." 

For  the  next  few  days  Beatrice's  work  went  wrong. 
More  often  than  not  she  found  herself  looking  up  from 
her  paper,  staring  out  through  the  window,  across  the 
lawn  to  the  grape  arbor.  She  would  catch  herself 
at  it  and  turn  again  to  her  work.  Finally  she  decided 
that  she  had  best  fight  it  out.  So  —  forgetting  to 
put  the  cap  on  her  fountain-pen  —  she  walked  out 
into  the  garden. 

There  was  no  possible  doubt  of  it.  She  was  afraid 
of  Yetta  —  jealous  !  She  tried  to  laugh  at  herself,  but 
it  hurt  too  much.  Yetta  was  years  younger  than  she. 

Isadore  she  had  scarcely  known,  was  not  quite  sure 
whether  she  had  the  name  attached  to  the  right  vague 
memory,  but  she  held  an  impression  that  he  was  an 
unattractive  person.  Yetta  had  probably  married 
him  in  discouragement.  Undoubtedly  she  still  loved 
Walter.  In  these  last  four  years  Beatrice  had  been 
constantly  discovering  that  he  was  more  lovable  than 
she  had  realized  before.  Yes ;  Yetta  was  probably  still 
in  love  with  him.  Would  she  accept  the  invitation  ? 

A  telegraph  boy  turned  into  their  gate.  She  had  not 
opened  a  despatch  with  such  unsteady  nervousness  in 
a  long  time. 

"Arrive  Oxford  thursday  afternoon  four  o'clock 
leave  ten  for  Liverpool  Yetta" 

Beatrice  walked  slowly  back  to  the  house  and  into 
Walter's  study.  It  was  as  dissimilar  from  her  very 
orderly  work-room  as  well  might  be.  There  were  three 


OLD   FRIENDS  MEET— AND  PART  439 

large  tables,  but  each  was  too  small  for  the  litter  of 
books  and  charts  and  drawings  and  closely  written 
notes  it  carried. 

"They're  coming  to-morrow  at  four,"  she  said, 
handing  him  the  telegram. 

"Good." 

"I  suppose  we'd  best  have  tea  and  then  sight-see 
them  around  the  colleges  till  dinner." 

"I  guess  the  tour  is  obligatory,"  he  said  with  a  gri 
mace.  "Has  the  Muse  been  refractory  this  morning? 
I  saw  you  rambling  round  in  the  garden." 

"Yes,"  her  lips  twisted  into  a  wry  smile.  "Had  to 
fight  out  a  new  idea.  It's  provoking.  You  get  things 
nicely  planned  out,  everything  marching  placidly  to  a 
happy  ending  —  then  something  unexpected  turns  up, 
some  eleventh-hour  disturbance.  Something  you've 
got  to  take  time  off  to  think  out." 

"Fine,"  he  said.  "You're  growing  into  a  more 
realistic  vision  of  life  all  the  time,  B.  And  that  means 
constantly  improving  novels." 

He  got  up  and  walked  about  the  room,  developing 
into  quite  a  speech  his  ideas  on  the  Unexpected  Element 
in  Life  and  how  it  deserved  more  recognition  in  litera 
ture.  But  all  the  time,  while  she  was  appearing  to 
listen  in  rapture  to  his  wisdom,  she  was  telling  herself 
bitter  things  about  the  literal-minded,  uncomprehend 
ing  male. 

Thursday  afternoon  as  Yetta  and  Isadore  found  their 
places  in  the  train  for  Oxford  they  both  had  an  unusual 
feeling  of  tongue-tiedness.  They  were  quite  tired  and 
it  was  a  relief  to  have  sleepiness  as  an  excuse  for  not 
talking.  Yetta  was  not  conscious  of  any  stress  between 
them.  She  believed  that  Isadore  was  as  sleepy  as  he 


440  COMRADE  YETTA 

pretended  to  be.  It  seemed  to  her  the  most  natural 
thing  in  the  world  to  renew  old  friendships. 

She  opened  her  eyes  now  and  then  for  a  glimpse  at 
the  unfamiliar  countryside.  But  most  of  the  time  she 
dreamily  lived  over  again  "  the  old  days."  She  was 
generally  too  busy  to  think  these  things  out  leisurely  — 
as  you  must  if  you  are  to  think  of  them  at  all.  She 
found  it  hard  to  recognize  the  picture  of  herself  which 
she  drew  out  of  her  memory.  The  few  years,  which 
had  passed  since  her  marriage,  seemed  to  her  much 
longer  and  fuller  than  all  her  life  before.  She,  a  mother 
of  two  children,  found  it  very  hard  to  sympathize  with 
the  jeune  fille,  who  had  been  so  very  much  in  love  with 
this  man  she  had  scarcely  seen  a  dozen  times.  She  was 
half  sorry  she  had  accepted  the  invitation.  She  was  no 
longer  the  same  person  whom  Walter  and  Beatrice  had 
known.  Instead  of  renewing  an  old  acquaintance,  her 
visit  to  Oxford  would  be  that  of  a  stranger.  It  would 
be  embarrassing  if  Walter  treated  her  like  the  girl  he 
had  known.  But  it  never  occurred  to  her  that  Isadore 
was  suffering  from  jealous  apprehension. 

"  Oxford's  the  next  station,"  Isadore  said. 

It  jerked  her  out  of  her  revery.  As  they  got  off  the 
train  there  was  a  kaleidoscopic  moment,  an  impres 
sion  of  many  people  rushing  hither  and  thither  in 
a  senseless  chaos.  Then  suddenly  the  vagueness  dis 
solved,  and  there  were  Walter  and  Beatrice,  the  blank 
look  on  their  faces  just  melting  into  a  smile  of  recog 
nition.  Everybody  shook  hands,  the  women  kissed 
each  other,  and  Walter  and  Isadore  rushed  off  to  check 
the  bags. 

Yetta's  motherhood  had  changed  her  subtly.  She 
could  not  have  been  called  matronly.  In  fact,  Beatrice, 


OLD  FRIENDS  MEET  — AND  PART  441 

who  was  childless,  was  poignantly  conscious  that  she 
looked  the  more  like  a  regulation  matron.  The  contrast 
hurt  her. 

The  thing  which  Yetta  saw  was  that  Beatrice  had  come 
to  reflect  the  gracious  refinement  of  her  surroundings. 
There  was  a  sudden  longing  that  life  might  have  thrown 
her  into  an  environment  where  she  too  could  have  given 
time  and  thought  to  being  beautiful.  It  was  rare  in 
deed  that  she  could  devote  ten  minutes  to  "  doing  her 
hair."  It  took  all  the  time  she  could  spare  to  keep 
herself  clean  and  neat.  Beatrice's  appearance  sug 
gested  that  the  selecting  of  even  her  underwear  was  a 
matter  of  careful  thought.  Yetta,  also,  was  poignantly 
conscious  of  the  contrast. 

When  the  men  rejoined  them,  they  all  —  still  under 
the  constraint  of  stock-taking  —  climbed  into  the  dog 
cart  and  drove  through  the  quaint  Oxford  streets  to 
the  house. 

Yetta  talked  busily  —  a  bit  raggedly  —  about  her 
two  children.  Walter  pointed  out  the  towers  of  some 
of  the  colleges.  Neither  Beatrice  nor  Isadore  added 
much  to  the  conversation.  The  tea-table  was  set  on 
the  lawn,  but  the  constraint  was  still  on  them.  Yetta 
told  with  slightly  forced  enthusiasm  of  the  little  house 
and  lot  they  had  taken  in  a  Building  and  Loan  Associa 
tion  on  Long  Island.  Isadore  at  last  rallied  in  reply  to 
Walter's  questions  and  talked  about  the  International 
Congress.  The  thing  which  had  impressed  him  most 
was  the  widespread  growth  of  revolutionary,  non- 
political  labor  organizations.  The  growth  of  indus 
trial  unionism  in  America  was  closely  paralleled  by 
the  Syndicalists  movement  in  Europe. 

"I  never  gave  you  sufficient  credit  as  a  prophet, 


442  COMRADE  YETTA 

Walter,"  he  said.  "I'm  an  orthodox  party  member 
still,  but  this  '  direct  actionism'  doesn't  seem  so  much 
like  heresy  to  me  as  it  did.  It's  too  universal  to  be  all 
wrong." 

When  they  got  up  from  the  table  to  wander  about  in 
the  University,  he  and  Walter  walked  ahead,  still  in 
the  heat  of  this  discussion.  The  women  brought  up 
the  rear.  Yetta  found  that  the  easiest  things  to  talk 
about  were  the  babies  and  Beatrice's  novels.  She  had 
i-ead  and  liked  them  very  much. 

They  sat  down  together  in  the  grounds  of  Christ 
Church,  and  Isadore  began  to  tell  about  The  Clarion. 
Yetta  joined  in  the  men's  talk,  and  Beatrice  felt  herself 
decidedly  out  of  it.  She  was  glad  when  the  time  came 
to  go  back  for  dinner.  But  that  was  no  better,  for  still 
the  talk  clung  to  The  Clarion.  It  interested  them  so 
much  that  she  could  not  find  heart  to  change  the  subject. 

The  moon' came  up  royally  as  they  took  their  coffee 
on  the  terrace.  Without  any  one  suggesting  it,  they 
strolled  down  the  lawn  and  along  the  river.  Great 
trees  stretched  their  branches  overhead  across  the 
stream.  It  was  a  warm  night,  and  many  boats  were 
out.  Their  gay  lanterns  glistened  over  the  water. 
Here  and  there  a  song  floated  through  the  dusk.  The 
predominant  note  of  the  scene  was  laughter. 

But  the  riverside  did  not  seem  beautiful  to  Isadore ; 
Beatrice  had  never  cared  less  for  it.  Walter  and 
Yetta  were  walking  on  ahead. 

Beatrice  found  a  sort  of  whimsical  sympathy  for  her 
companion  —  realizing  that  he  also  was  troubled  by  the 
turn  things  had  taken.  The  unrest  of  each  infected 
the  other.  It  required  all  the  social  tact  she  could  com 
mand  to  keep  up  the  semblance  of  a  conversation. 


OLD  FRIENDS  MEET  — AND  PART  443 

Yetta  had  taken  Walter's  arm,  and  for  a  while  they 
walked  in  silence.  But  somehow  the  constraint  sud 
denly  fell  away,  and  she  felt  in  him  the  old  friend  to 
whom  it  had  always  been  so  easy  to  talk. 

"It's  strange,"  she  said,  "how  very  often  I  have  taken 
your  advice  and  found  it  good.  More  and  more  I  realize 
what  a  big  factor  you've  been  in  my  life.  A  dozen  times 
I've  been  on  the  point  of  writing  to  you.  But  it's  so 
hard  to  put  on  paper  the  deeper  sort  of  thanks." 

Walter  tried  to  protest. 

"Oh,  yes,"  she  insisted.  "I've  lots  of  things  to 
thank  you  for.  It's  hard  to  put  it  into  words.  But 
now  that  it's  ancient  history,  now  that  the  wounds  have 
healed,  I  want  to  talk  about  it.  When  you  told  me  to 
marry  Isadore,  it  seemed  like  the  cruelest  words  that 
could  be  spoken.  You  were  right  in  smashing  up 
my  romance.  But  of  all  the  lessons  you  ever  set  me, 
that  was  the  hardest  to  learn,  the  bitterest.  I  could 
not  take  your  word  for  it.  I  had  to  learn  it  for  my 
self.  But  if  you  had  not  driven  me  to  it,  I  would 
have  been  a  romanticist  still  —  always  weaving  dreams. 
I  would  never  have  found  the  wonder  and  beauty  of  life 
as  it  is. 

"I  guess  any  suffering  is  worth  while  that  teaches 
a  real  lesson.  I  can  be  philosophic  about  those  tear- 
stained  months  now.  But  they  were  dreary  enough  — 
and  sometimes  worse.  I  don't  believe  there  was  any 
thing  that  Job  said  about  the  day  he  was  born  that  I 
did  not  echo. 

"Isadore  was  wonderful  those  days.  He  didn't  give 
me  any  advice  nor  try  to  comfort  me.  He  just  called 
me  up  in  the  morning  and  gave  me  enough  work  for  six 
people.  I  did  have  a  little  sense  left.  I  could  see  that 


444  COMRADE  YETTA 

work  was  my  only  hope  of  pulling  through.  The  Clar 
ion  office  was  the  busiest  place  I  could  find  —  so  I  cut 
loose  from  the  League  and  went  down  there. 

"But  Mabel  has  never  forgiven  me  for  leaving  her. 
I've  hardly  seen  her  since." 

They  walked  on  for  a  moment  in  silence,  and  then  she 
took  up  her  story  again. 

"My  real  ignorance  used  to  be  that  I  thought  there 
could  be  no  love  without  romance.  I  thought  they  were 
the  same  thing.  And  that's  the  wonder  of  reality,  it 
calls  out  something  so  immensely  deeper  than  dream- 
love.  I  see  Isadore's  crooked  shoulder  as  clearly  as 
any  one.  I  know  the  words  he  insists  on  mispronounc 
ing.  I  know  the  little,  uncontrolled  hooks  of  his  tem 
per  that  things  are  always  catching  on.  I  don't  for  a 
moment  think  he's  a  god.  Perhaps  it  is  just  the  fact 
that  I  know  him  so  very  much  better  than  other 
people  do  that  would  make  me  laugh  at  any  one  who 
said  I  didn't  truly  love  him  !  And  then  the  babies ! 
Think  of  it,  Walter.  I've  got  two  of  them.  My  very 
own  !  You  said  something  like  this  once  —  that  flesh 
and  blood  were  more  wonderful  than  any  dream.  It 
was  a  hard,  painful  lesson  to  learn,  but  I  guess  it's  the 
one  I  want  to  thank  you  for  most." 

"It's  a  truth,"  Walter  replied,  "which  Beatrice  has 
helped  me  to  rediscover  very  often  these  last  years. 
We  love  each  other  with  a  big  E.  It  certainly  didn't 
start  with  the  romantic  capital  L.  It's  just  the  op 
posite  of  that  proposition  —  of  the  flaming  beginning 
that  gradually  peters  out.  It's  something  with  us 
that's  alive  —  growing  every  day." 

Her  hand  on  his  arm  gave  him  a  friendly,  understand 
ing  squeeze. 


OLD  FRIENDS  MEET  — AND  PART  445 

"It's  so  wonderful  a  world/'  she  said,  "it  almost 
hurts  !  There's  so  very,  very  much  to  do.  The  min 
utes  are  so  amazingly  full.  And  somehow  it  all  seems 
to  centre  around  the  babies.  They've  given  Socialism 
a  new  meaning  to  me,  have  brought  it  all  nearer,  made 
it  more  intimate  and  personal,  more  closely  woven  into 
myself.  Isadore  and  I  were  used  to  the  tenements, 
they'd  ceased  to  impress  us  —  till  the  babies  came. 
I'm  glad  my  little  brood  can  grow  up  in  the  sunlight 
and  fresh  air,  with  a  little  grass  to  play  on.  But  the 
thought  of  all  the  millions  of  babies  in  the  slums  has 
become  the  very  corner-stone  of  my  thinking.  It's  for 
them.  We've  just  got  to  win  Socialism  for  the  babies  ! 
I  wish  you  could  see  mine.  I'll  send  you  a  photograph." 

Her  mind  switched  off  to  more  concrete  problems; 
she  talked  of  immediate  plans  and  hopes.  Meanwhile, 
Isadore  kept  looking  at  his  watch,  and  each  time  he 
pulled  it  out,  Beatrice  asked  him  what  time  it  was. 
At  last  it  was  necessary  to  turn  back  to  catch  the  train. 


Conversation  lagged  as  the  Longmans  walked  home 
from  the  station.  Walter  was  wrapped  up  in  some  line  of 
thought  and  Beatrice's  first  efforts  fell  flat.  The  silence 
became  oppressive  to  her  as  they  entered  their  house. 

"Walter,"  she  said,  "I'd  bid  as  high  as  three  shillings 
for  your  thoughts." 

"Keep  your  money.  These  are  jewels  beyond 
price."  He  tumbled  himself  lazily  into  a  big  leather 
chair.  "What  they  tell  about  that  paper  of  theirs  is 
amazing.  I'm  beginning  to  see  some  reason  for  the 
hostility  which  the  working-class  has  for  the  '  intel 
lectuals.'  If  Isadore  had  asked  my  advice,  —  or  any 


446  COMRADE  YETTA 

of  the  college-bred  Socialists  in  New  York,  —  he'd  have 
been  told  that  it  was  absolutely  impossible  to  pull 
through  with  a  daily.  Well,  the  working-class  knew 
what  they  wanted  and  darned  if  they  didn't  get  it ! 
It's  amazing !" 

"  Walter,  if  I  really  believed  that  was  what  you'd 
been  thinking  about,  I'd  kiss  you." 

"I  don't  see  why  you  shouldn't  do  both,"  he  said, 
making  room  for  her  in  the  chair  beside  him.  But 
seeing  a  suspicious  glitter  in  her  eyes,  he  sprang  up. 
"  Why,  B.  !  You're  crying  !  What's  the  matter  ?  " 

She  put  her  hands  on  his  shoulders  and  looked  search- 
ingly  in  his  face. 

"Honest?  Cross  your  heart  to  die?  Weren't  you 
thinking  about  Yetta?" 

"You  little  idiot,"  he  said,  with  the  glow  which  comes 
to  a  man  who  is  being  indirectly  flattered.  "Been 
jealous,  have  you?" 

He  picked  her  up  in  his  arms. 

"Let's  go  out  on  the  porch.  I'll  tell  you  everything 
she  said  to  me  —  and  then  we'll  look  up  at  the  moon." 


"Well,"  Yetta  said,  settling  herself  in  the  compart 
ment  of  the  train,  as  the  lights  of  Oxford  slipped  past 
the  windows,  "I'm  glad  we  visited  them." 

Isadore  moved  uneasily. 

"It  wasn't  unpleasant?"  he  asked  in  Yiddish  —  so 
that  the  other  passengers  might  not  understand.  "I 
don't  feel  as  if  I  showed  up  very  well  in  comparison 
to  Walter." 

She  leaned  forward  so  she  could  look  him  squarely 
in  the  face. 


OLD  FRIENDS  MEET  — AND  PART  447 

"Isadore  !"  she  said  in  an  aggrieved  tone,  "  can't  men 
ever  understand  women  —  not  even  the  very  simplest 
things?  Three  years  I  wasted  dreaming  —  no;  I 
won't  say '  wasted. '  I  haven't  any  quarrel  with  my  girl 
hood.  Three  years  I  dreamed  about  him.  But  it's 
four  years  now  —  four  years  —  that  I've  lived  with 
you.  Can't  you  understand  how  immense  that  differ 
ence  seems  to  a  woman  ?  There  are  some  of  my  ideas, 
perhaps,  some  of  my  intellect  that  he's  father  of.  But, 
Isadore,  you're  the  father  of  my  children." 

"Yes,"  he  said,  somewhat  comforted.  "I  think  I 
can  understand  a  little  of  that  —  but  —  well,  I  never 
wished  I  had  money  so  much  before.  I  wish  I  could 
give  you  the  things  Walter  would  have." 

"  Don't  you  do  any  mourning  about  that,"  she  said 
brazenly,  "till  I  begin  it." 

She  slipped  her  hand  into  his,  indifferent  to  the  other 
passengers.  Her  conscience  hurt  a  little  on  this  score, 
for  after  all  she  had  envied  Beatrice's  opportunity  to 
be  beautiful.  They  sat  silent  for  quite  a  long  in 
terval. 

"I'm  glad  we  visited  them,"  she  went  on.  "But 
I'm  gladder  that  we're  started  home  again.  I'm  crazy 
to  get  back." 

"Worrying  about  the  kids?" 

"Oh,  yes!  Of  course,  I  worry  about  them  all  the 
time.  Aunt  Martha's  as  good  to  them  as  she  knows 
how,  but  she's  so  old-fashioned.  But  I'm  glad  for 
another  reason.  I  never  realized  before  the  real  differ 
ence  between  Walter  and  me.  It's  a  wonderfully 
beautiful  life,  that  cottage  of  theirs,  the  books,  the 
old  colleges,  and  the  river.  You  can't  deny  that 
there's  a  graciousness  about  it.  But  it  would  kill  me. 


448  COMRADE  YETTA 

He's  happy  thinking  about  things.     But  I'd  die  if  I 
wasn't   doing  things!     Love  isn't  enough   by  itself 
I'd  starve.     I'm  hungry  to  get  back  to  work.     That's 
the  Real  Thing,  we  got,  Isadore.     It  makes  our  Love 
worth  while.     Our  Work." 


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